Dear Editor,
My name is Jessie and I am one of freshmen currently on the TCU Senate. Senate has been under a lot of fire lately, so I'd like to bring something to your attention. Recently, we had seven people show up to our meeting - six of whom criticized us for not being representative of the student body. However, as a few of us freshmen looked around the room at each other, we noticed something interesting: As the only contested election for senators, we had the most diverse representation. Although there are only seven freshman members, we represent the Latino, African-American, LGBT, Jewish and International student communities.
While we strive to represent the student body, not much can be done without your help. You're right - the representation on TCU Senate isn't great. It's concerning when only a quarter of our representatives are women. It's concerning that only one member of the body is Asian-American and that he stands alone as the Asian-American community representative. It's concerning that this year we only have one black member and no current representative for the Africana Center Community Representative position.
So get angry at us, please. Object to what is happening to your student government and seek to change it. Didn't like the statue idea? Fight against ideas like it. Frustrated that the climbing wall didn't pull through? Be here so that we can rally Athletics until it happens. Done with the empty promises? Step up and make things happen. Contrary to popular belief, we want you to challenge us. We want to have to fight for our seats, because we want people to fight for what students deserve from this university. Show up to the GIM this Wednesday at 12 p.m. or Thursday at 8 p.m. for this year's elections. Counter us-and beat us, too. This is a representative democracy, and let's keep it that way.
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Sincerely,
Jessie Serrino
