Student government. In a more perfect world, those two words would never be pushed together into unholy union. At worst, it would be some sort of vestigial notion whose purpose for existence has long since passed, like an appendix. Unfortunately, student government is all too real, especially in its tendency to harm the student body through self-destruction (like an appendix).

This is shaping up to be my final semester at UB, and at the moment I’m not looking back at my time here in fond reminiscence, examining what I’ve learned, or remarking on how fast it all seemed to fly by. Instead, I’m rather disgusted.

Unless I’m mistaken, there has been a scandal or shakeup at some level of student government (usually the top) every year I’ve attended UB. Disgrace in the student government is a constant I have learned to live with. The most recent was now-former GSA president Aubrey Balcom’s spending spree during a conference in Seattle, which has cost him his position (read all about it on page 12). The case bears a striking similarity to the gross misappropriation of funds that occurred in the Undergraduate Student Association under President George Pape during the 2003-2004 school year (we wisely elected his treasurer, Anthony Burgio, to the position of president that year).

Then there was the alleged case of bribery during the 2005 SA election, when SA Treasurer hopeful Mazin Kased was accused of offering a job to his opponent, Matthew Pelkey, in exchange for dropping out of the race. Unfortunately, Pelkey’s Reform Our Campus party didn’t get their act together and let the case fall through the cracks. And that’s not to mention the inevitable claims of shattered election rules that always crop up as the spring semester winds down, or unaccounted mileage on SA vans, etc., etc.

At first I thought these were isolated cases—bad apples, if you will. As more and more time passes, however, I believe that less and less. The interesting thing about the Balcom case is that it’s not over. There are some in GSA who would like to see the entire E-board dissolved, even though that could severely cripple the organization’s ability to function. But they have a point; this $2,177.78 expense report should have raised a red flag with both VP Jillian Flood and Treasurer Saaket Varma, both of whom had to sign off on it. Then the notorious documents made their way over to Sub-Board, who couldn’t seem to find anything wrong with the figures, either.

I don’t think that the machine is broken, but it’s apparent we’re receiving a lot of shipments of defective parts. A lot of parts that are consistently making very bad decisions over a long period of time. I think that’s called a trend.

I remember the first time I voted for anything—class president of fifth grade. I wasn’t too shocked when the most popular kid (who would naturally go on to be a star player on the high school football team and awkwardly grope the prom queen) carried away the election. And the little shit didn’t even extend playground hours like he promised.

For the rest of public school our “student government” was more of the same (replace “playground hours” with “parking spaces”), but that didn’t really matter because there was no power to be held in those positions. They were there, for the most part, to give the students who filled the offices some experience. Learn Robert’s Rules of Order, run a meeting, work on a budget, that sort of thing. In the end a nice little event or service emerges, and everyone’s happy.

This formula has not changed on the college level, except for one vital detail: now there’s power. GSA and SA sport six and seven figure budgets, respectively, yet they still seem primarily designed to perpetuate themselves and offer benefits to the members. GSA, for example, is currently spending much more on administration than actually providing student services. Which is not the worst thing in the world, I suppose; I have no interest in depriving our most ambitious and well-dressed youngsters the gift of networking opportunities. But if absolute power corrupts absolutely, it stands to reason that a measure of power corrupts to some measure. Not always, but often. That’s when you, the students, get your money stolen so your elected official of choice can enjoy his business trip.

Add to all this the terrifying fact that those at the top of student government could very well be leaders after graduating to the real world, and the plot thickens. Balcom would be lucky to escape after only losing his job if he pulled this stunt elsewhere (just ask Jeffrey Skilling of Enron). CEOs are going to prison left and right for doing more or less just what Balcom did, albeit on a larger scale. Are these really the values our generation has been instilled with?

In all honesty, I sometimes wonder what I would do in the shoes of, say, Aubrey Balcom. The power to simply scribble your name on a document to make the price of an $80 dinner disappear is no doubt intoxicating, not to mention far too easy to abuse. That is why one must resist such temptation and why we, as voters, must strive to elect officials who won’t rob us blind. We’re trusting these guys with our student fees now, but who knows which reins they may be holding tomorrow?

I wish I had an answer to why this sort of thing is always happening. Perhaps it’s that we’re all still fairly young and stupid, and that we need to get our mistakes out of the way. Maybe it’s all too easy to be blinded by the work vs. rewards for a particular job. Being SA or GSA President can’t be an easy task. But it’s supposed to be a job of service, with experience being the ultimate reward. You’re supposed to put the good of those in your constituency above your own, and it’s disappointing that those who go through all the trouble to rise to the top don’t understand this vital and fundamental tenet of representative government.

I think most of us would agree that the leaders our parents picked haven’t done a very good job governing our parents. Why would we do any different for ourselves?