Early Tuesday morning, I got an email from a friend with a link to UNews.  The French Honor Society for which I had been president until August 2011 was slated for charter revocation by SGA.  Being out of the country for a semester abroad in France, I was absolutely flabbergasted to picture how this had developed in under four months and why I was only learning of it via newspaper.  I made contact with our current president, Dominique Novelly, and the VP of Student Organizations, Tyler Sondag.  The sequence of events paints SGA in a very murky light.

Only last year, French Club’s e-board attended all mandatory meetings.  We successfully lobbied for an increase in our funding appropriation.  I should add that we receive well under one hundred dollars—hardly a sum to cause suspicion from our peers.  Fall 2011 started as normal.  In fact, we received no emails whatsoever from SGA.  No CSO meetings, no requests for updated contact information.  Then within the past week, Dominique learns that she has to defend our society in front of SGA’s assembly.  Tyler’s words really put our crime into light: “Unfortunately, at some point in time over the past few years we’ve lost contact with each other. (We really have no accurate way of deciphering exactly where the disconnect occurred, though).”

So then why the aggressive action?  Why could not the various committees and administrations of SGA share their databases since we were in touch only last May?  And most bemusing of all:  If no one in SGA had our contact information anymore, then how could they expect us to know they wanted to hear from us?

It is one thing to conduct an inquiry, another to suspend a privilege.  Yet SGA has gone beyond even that.  In less than four months, they have threatened to completely withdraw their recognition of our club.  Nothing so permanent should be effectuated faster than a student organization can react.  Since our senators are in fact students, they ought to understand just how greatly the interest in a club can wax and wane within the course of a year.  Should membership fall or executives slack off, one only need await the next elections for a charismatic campaigner to restore the club’s old efficacy.  No organization should be terminated so brashly, so unfairly.

That is why my favorite part of the ordeal is how Tyler Sondag responds to my emails.  He is very polite, quick to point out that SGA is just as likely to have erred as is a student group.  And yet, he himself puts the word “fairness” in quotes—just like that.  Is he, too, sensing the irony and underlying injustice in SGA’s procedure?  SGA is respectable for its efforts at transparency, but not for emulating the secret tribunal model.  If the Committee for Student Organizations had any sense of humor, they would post “Wanted” fliers across campus for the missing CSOs.  That’s some communication we can see.

– Maggie Foster is a senior in the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology.