Team One: A review of what happened?
With the advent of the 2018 Student Government elections, it seems appropriate to take a step back, and review the achievements of the previous administration. About a year ago, IE students headed to the polls ready to vote for a team that would become their Student Government for the 2017/18 academic year. Serving as a bridge between the students and the administration, the Government plays a key role in creating a healthy university environment. Last year’s winners, Team One, claimed the victory convincing students with their, “If you want something done, vote Team One”, slogan.
However, as their term comes to a close, it is important to analyze what this year’s government accomplished.
Team One ran on a five point plan, devised to cover all facets of the IE community's experience:
● An open government
● Entrepreneurship
● Community development
● Academics
● Extracurricular development
In establishing this plan, Team One sought to create an interactive government in which the concerns of the student body could be taken directly to the administration itself, thereby rendering the government ‘Open’.
Keeping the idea of an Open Government in mind, Team One pushed a number of policies specifically designed at creating dialogue between the students and the administration.
On November 8th, the Government, mostly based in Segovia, started ‘Office hours’ in which students could go to their respective Student Hubs and voice their concerns about their experience. This opportunity was offered again the following week in Segovia and in Madrid on January 26th.
More recently, they created Student Committees, where representatives from all years and degrees were granted a forum to discuss improvements to student life.
Evaluating the effectiveness of these two initiatives is a complex issue, for both the student body, and most importantly the Government. Within Team One itself, opinions on the effectiveness of Open Government policies were divided.
“I believe we succeeded in [the open government] front and we have been a much more professional student government than the previous ones,” Vice-President Guzman Noya stated.
It is undeniable that this government has strived for continuity in their policies. Taking the Student Committees as an example, this was an idea that allowed for a long term dialogue to exist within the community.
However, in her interview, Extracurricular Officer Ntokozo Yende described the Open government policies as “yes and no.”
In saying ‘Yes’, Yende specified the long term initiative of student committees. It is important to keep in mind however, that it is still too early to evaluate the effectiveness of such a new programme, as described by Yende’s “No” response.
On the other hand, office hours were proven to be unsuccessful, with only two follow ups in both campuses after the original implementation of the policy.
According to Public Relations Officer Giulia Camargo, the main issue in the office hours idea was the lack of student response. Only a few people showed up to the event, leading to its discontinuation in Segovia and Madrid on November 16th and January 26th respectively.
As of right now, the Open Government policies have not been fully effective due to the lack of student engagement and follow ups from the Student Government’s side. Evidently, there is a clear disconnect between the government’s policies and the student population that prevented Team One from achieving its key objective.
The Open Government platform also reveals an interesting dissonance between the Madrid and Segovia campuses. There appeared to be no genuine consensus between the members’ views for attaining the Government’s objectives.
Representatives in Madrid state that the Open government was successful, whilst representatives in Segovia held a contrary belief, and mention that the policies were only “a step in the right direction”.
Seeing that a unified perspective on the effectiveness of Open Government is virtually non-existent, the communication issues within the Government itself become apparent.
“We had some shortcomings regarding internal communication, which hindered some of the work we were trying to do” described President Hedigan.
However, as Team One’s term comes to a close, it seems that these issues not only affected what they were trying to do, but their evaluation as well.
The divergence present within the Government’s policies could also be attributed to shifts in leadership. During the first semester, Noya stepped in for Hedigan who left on exchange at the beginning of the term, and later returned to power the subsequent semester to fill the void left by Noya’s imminent exchange. This suggests that the lack of stability in the upper echelons of the government could be defined as a key explanatory factor in the internal miscommunication in Team One.
Another key element that sticks out above the rest is the absence of dialogue between the Government and its student representatives. As a 1st year representative for L.L.B, Ruslan Saleev pointed out that he felt that “there was not enough communication between the Student Government and the students.”
Officer Camargo acknowledged this problem.
“A lot of the things that get changed in the university are based on student representatives,” she stated. But besides the representatives meeting early last semester, the interaction between student government and representatives has been nearly non-existent ever since.
Returning to the idea of an open government, perhaps it would have been more beneficial to Team One to work closer with student representatives, thereby capitalising on the already existing link between the student body and it’s representatives.
However, it must be said that the move to establish student committees was extremely beneficial and, as stated by Community Development officer Angela Selzer, “it was something that should have been done earlier.”
Team One’s term has shown that theory and flat promises do not necessarily translate into practice. For example, their pledge to make student clubs more open and available throughout their campaign is a clear illustration of the divide between their promises and reality.
As Officer Yende described, one of the Government’s goals was to make club budgets more open and available to the student population. While this sounded good in theory, it did not translate effectively into practice, primarily due to the fact that it is not up to the Government to decide how funds are spent - instead, the final decision always lies with the administration.
Moreover, it seems that Team One was not prepared for the extremely long bureaucratic process needed to implement proper policies. One can summarise the goals of Team One as good, but badly executed implementation.
It is important to state that the student government has put forth some great initiatives, especially in the field of mental health. From November 13th to 14th, there was a strong push to promote awareness for mental health through talks like the one with former international rugby player, Luke Ambler, who focused on the need for male emotional expression.
One of their most successful initiatives, the Luke Ambler talk had extremely positive reviews from the student body and brought a complex issue to the forefront.
What is important to keep in mind however is that Team one’s term is yearlong, which is why the lack of follow up on the topic of mental health is sad to see. Unfortunately, the Luke Ambler talk was the one and only event related to mental health.
However, looking back at Team One’s term, many policies were a step in the right direction.
Overall, there are three primary issues that affected the student government’s performance:
● Lack of engagement
● Communication
● Time
Indeed, Team One attempted to make an active effort to stimulate dialogue within the student body, but the issue of abysmal student engagement nullified their endeavours.
Perhaps, the Government should have pushed more for continuous communication with class representatives to increase student engagement, whilst considering the long bureaucratic process entrenched in the university’s administration.
Its push for a more transparent administration may not have been extremely effective this year, but it has laid a necessary foundation for future “change of vision.”
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