PERSPECTIVE: Politics and the Union Senate

Those who govern the affairs of humanity are to conduct themselves with restrained dignity, keeping in mind the heavy weight of their constituents, their predecessors and their responsibilities. But to the rest of us, politics is a spectacle.

Behind every cleanly tailored suit and even more cleanly tailored speech is a host of desperate hopes, smoke-filled living rooms and furious curses flung at a television screen. Political values and platforms are for the realm of the dignified politician, but people want speeches, conflict and the thrill of victory.

Politics is a performance art, a combat sport throwing — like boxing — the wills and passions of two heroes at each other with astonishing force. I hold a macabre fascination for the art of political wrangling.

I take any chance I can to see rhetoricians slug it out, no matter what form of politics. The Union Senate was the logical recourse for my passion. The senate, despite its general irrelevance and uncompelling politics, is a wonderful way to spend a late Wednesday evening.

While attending senate is an option for any student, in order to get the full experience, I had to become a senator. I am a senator for the Association of Computing Machinery. When I started I knew nothing about the association or even computer machinery, but despite my shortcomings, I was and am a proud spokesperson.

Union Senate meets every other Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. in Harvey Auditorium. Flooded by a miraculously nonirritating fluorescent light, the room is both cavernous and somehow comfortable. Long tables rise up in rows. They face the front, lined with rolling chairs that recline dangerously low, tempting some senatorial Icarus to lean back too far and collapse in a tumble of legs and wheels. The room lacks color, preferring a stark white and gray. The clinical walls, however, are sharply contrasted by the shockingly colorful participants.

College students are notoriously informal, but senators take themselves seriously. These two impulses collide violently, resulting in a parade of the formal and the casual.

One senator strides past my table in an elegant gray three-piece suit, complete with a pocket watch. Still more stumble into their seats wearing tattered hoodies, sweatpants and bright beanies. One senator succumbs to both urges, wearing a dress shirt, well ironed, with green gym shorts. Hawaiian shirts, party dresses and suit coats create a vibrant display of diversity, directly reflecting the informality yet astonishing sobriety of Union Senate.

This contrast between casualness and seriousness looms over the senate. Some sit in their chairs nervously, as if the entire senate were judging their every action. Some sit confident in their values and unshaken in their campus politics. Others sleep soundly.

Informality and sobriety struggle to find a middle ground in the senate. One senator described to me the conflict between these extremes to sailing into the wind. Just as the helmsman must steer as close as possible to the oncoming wind without falling too deep to retain control, so must the senator steer as close as possible to taking his or her job too seriously without succumbing to the Machiavellian lust for gain which plagues those who hold insignificant power.

The procedure for using this power is straightforward. The body is called to order, and after several announcements, a speaker updates the body on the success or failure of past bills.

One bill was ineffective because it tried to change federal law, while another bill fails because it tried to establish a policy that is already in place. Frustration gathers in the room as the bills go by, each telling of failure or mediocre success. After the bills are read, the reader marches back to his chair and the body moves to the main event — legislation.

Senators stand, introduce their bills and hear questions and comments. Some speakers shift back and forth, eyes flickering from ceiling corner to ceiling corner, their voices constant but wavering. Others are numbingly matter of fact, stating their bill with calculated proficiency. Others speak with huge grins plastered on their faces, unable to take a senate that primarily deals with printer policies and posting signs seriously.

The senate follows a version of the traditional “Robert’s Rules of Order.” While the general procedure is the same, the rules remain nebulous and fluctuating, much to the chagrin of the more adamant parliamentarians who pepper the body.

Bills seem to consist primarily of appeals for funding. One bill introduced asks for $75 for the purchase of dry erase markers for engineering students. The bill is called to a vote, and it passes with ease.

Not every bill passes with this efficiency. One, asking for more drink options in the cafeteria, is questioned vigorously. One senator, rising slowly in a sweater vest, sagely puts questions to the speaker, politely and steadfastly suggesting that the bill is ridiculous. The drink options are discussed heavily with inoffensive, cautious language. Despite controversy and scrutiny, the bill passes. By the end of the session, we have spent more than $600.

As a performance in rhetoric, senate is not compelling. Arguments fly back and forth, but are generally phrased with too much fear or politeness to be interesting. While it is no wonder that speakers do not get passionate about floor mats and computer checks, my desire to see debate, argument and political battle is not fulfilled.

While senate does not give me the wrangling or politics I want, it delivers something entirely different. Filled with confused clothes, positions and people, senate is, as is politics, a spectacle. Rather than the spectacle of a boxing match, with two sides throwing punches, senate has the spectacle of a circus, with grotesque figures dancing a strange pageant. To the politician, the senate may be a disappointment, but to the people watcher, the senate is art.

Now I am a weathered senator with political friends and enemies. I am part of the pageant. I have become as embedded in campus politics as the people I snidely dismissed before. I eagerly read bills before sessions. I loudly participate in lunch table discussions over campus policy. I have stood in front of the senate body and argued at length.

Senate is a cross-section of campus moving and breathing like an allegory. The senate, like us, is often dull and mundane. But the senate, like us, occasionally can rise to things impossibly larger than itself.

The senate that asked me to vote for or against clarifying wording in its own attendance policy is the same senate that I stood in front of for an hour in vigorous debate over morality and YikYak.

Senate is a spectacle, but it is a spectacle worth having.