Welcome to March madness. No, we’re not talking about basketball. Instead, we’re talking about the time of the year when many are figuring out which organizations they will be involved in, which positions they are applying for, which positions they will actually get and which positions could be the sexiest bullet points on their LinkedIn.
This paper has a desire to eradicate meaningless positions and groups around campus in an effort to build a community that does work with substantial value and fulfillment instead of perpetuating a culture in which we’re content with just patting ourselves on the back. In this editorial today, the target of our derision is the Student Advisory Committee to the Chancellor, affectionately referred to as SACC.
According to the UNC student government website, “SACC is composed of 12 undergraduate and graduate students who meet monthly with the chancellor and meet weekly as a group to represent a broad range of student interests to the chancellor and to higher university administrators.”
These are certainly lofty ambitions, but also incredibly important ones. The chancellor is a busy woman, and she cannot possibly interact with 30,000 students at once. These 12 students are promised consistent facetime in return for hopefully advocating relentlessly for students on the most pressing issues. This is a group in which the potential for meaning and significant progress is substantial.
Most importantly, the lack of transparency on this external appointment team is shocking. How is it that the only “updated” information we can find about SACC is literally that one-sentence description above? We can’t find a single name of anyone on SACC online. Nor do we have meeting minutes, a list of projects they have been meeting about, or a list of points they bring up to the chancellor. Their Twitter accounts (of which they have two) haven’t even been updated since 2014.
Lastly, if SACC is really about representing “a broad range of student interests to the chancellor and to higher university administrators,” it must be explicitly focused and contingent on building a diverse group of students to sit on it. Yet, because SACC is an external appointment, its selection process is handled by members on the executive board for student government, which often leads to the same types of individuals applying for and receiving these positions.
As the next executive administration continues to roll out and build their executive board structure, they must answer this important question: If our student leadership groups fail to build transparency and accountability within their own processes, how can we expect them to demand transparency and accountability with administration? Last we checked, SACC isn’t the Order of Gimghoul — the time for secrets is over.
