Student Government Response- Team One: A Review of What Happened
In light of the recent article published in The Stork, it seems the appropriate time to respond publicly to what was suggested. The article brought up some relevant points regarding the current Student Government’s term. And for all of our shortcomings, I am sorry. But be assured – this is not a letter of apology.
The article surprisingly left out the vast majority of work that the Student Government has undertaken, in spite of the fact that The Stork’s writer had a full list of all Student Government activities and initiatives carried out over the year. Despite being factually correct, it is written in a biased tone, depicting a very unpleasant image based only on incomplete facts. These opinions should have been confirmed with follow-up questions rather than speculation on what the reasons for certain actions may have been.
It is sad to see that the student newspaper has allowed and even celebrated such sub-par “journalism” to be published, despite that I personally only last month strongly insisted in a meeting with the Vice Rectors of the University that there was to be no censorship in any way, where the previous weeks were full of talk that the University didn’t want anything negative to be published.
Communication was not the best. That is 100% true. However, it is difficult to inform students when they do not make the effort to be informed themselves. When we have sent emails to the student body, rarely does the percentage of students that merely open these emails rise above 50%. We began a monthly newsletter in first semester to inform the student body of our activities and then merged that into our section in The Stork this semester, as well as had regular activity on Facebook and Instagram. The newsletters were unopened by over 40% of students. Communication may have been flawed in many aspects, but it was also not the only part of our plan. Apart from the Open Government point of our 5 Point Plan, there were 4 other points that have failed.
The Open Office hours were discontinued because it was made clear, not just by non-attendance but with comments from the students, that if they had a problem then they would have messaged us individually or through the Facebook page. There was no lack of follow-up, but being students as well as Student Government members, we have to make sure we spend our time wisely.
The notion that our mental health push was not followed up is entirely incorrect. We have met with the Mentorship and Counselling Department and have begun working on a marketing strategy to make the services and their uses better known – it was previously kept very quiet due to fears of the service being unable to cope with more students due to underfunding. We have now been assured that this is changing and are working with the Faculty to improve this service.
The attempts to get proper funding from the clubs did not properly work because the clubs on the whole did not provide specified enough budgets in order to actually be granted university money. We can attempt all we want but if we don't get enough interaction from the students despite multiple emails, the university will say no. We were literally chasing down certain club leaders in order to try to give them money, but it wasn’t enough. And we have the emails to prove it.
The "contradictions" between the team members was misleading, justifying its opinions on nonsensical semantics. The supposed difference between "successful" and "a step in the right direction" is ludicrous. A step in the right direction is a success.
The contrast between plausible claims about "lack of stability at the top of the student government" to "an inescapable element of disconnect" are entirely speculative without any evidence whatsoever to back this up. Guzman and I consistently stayed in contact throughout the entire first semester on an almost daily basis, and I stayed in touch with every team member for a monthly individual check-up and review, which often meant waking up very early before class to compensate for the time difference to see individually how every member of the team was going, and how I could help them at a distance.
To claim that we were "not prepared for the extremely long bureaucratic process needed to implement policies" is just false. I made it personally clear throughout the campaign that the university takes a long time to make changes, and sometimes for good reason, and I have had first-hand experience of it for 3 years. Our proposals were not “flat promises”, they were not even promises. I made it abundantly clear that these were the ideas that we wanted to pursue. And we pursued them.
We organised the Freshers Week across Madrid and Segovia; we have been pushing for improved exam feedback and review sessions; we have pushed for professors to provide past exam papers for revision purposes; we have had implemented technology-related electives; we worked once again with the UN Student Association to organise the Connecting Cultures Exhibition, raising incredible funds for the refugee crisis; we have created a link with an events manager in Madrid who has been working with us to bring more events to the student body; we cleaned up the University’s roster of clubs that were inactive and attempted to get them functioning budgets; we began a partnership with Startup Grind to provide specialised workshops and talks for our entrepreneurs, as well as discounted tickets to their events; we improved the opening hours of Madrid’s library and campus, especially for midterms and finals; despite the flaws we have unequivocally been the most communicative Student Government to date through our use of social media and emails; we organised professional headshots for students in both campuses; and the rest of the second semester is still to come.
Do not get me wrong. I am well aware that a variety of plans did not go perfectly. But I am proud of my team for the hours and hours of hard work that have been put in over the year. For these young students to juggle dual degrees, sports commitments, social lives, clubs and Student Government is an incredible feat. And for what? 2 credits and an outright disrespectful article written by an ill-informed 1st year, who was not in IE yet when our campaign was held. However, it is this exact campaign the main object of criticism in his article. The fact that rarely any of our accomplishments or successes were delved into, and members such as Angie and Sabrina were not given credit is a disgrace – even more so given the fact that the writer had a full list of all Student Government accomplishments that had occurred over the course of the year.
Journalism is not synonymous with criticism. It is disappointing to see the potential for a truly informative and balanced article on the work of the Student Government descend into nothing more than an unbalanced and ignorant opinion aimed to cause controversy – not in order to inform or to reveal – but purely for the sake of controversy itself.
To have all the information they had and only focus on such a small portion of it in order to gain some hype is not professional. I hope that the student body is able to see the whole story and form their own opinions. I hope that The Stork will see its error in judgement by promoting it as a “stunning article.” And I certainly hope that our hard work has not been for nothing.