By Editorial Board
Every year like clockwork, ASUP holds its senate elections and new senators are shuffled into their respective representative seats. But for the last four years, a particular trend has emerged: a vacant seat for the non-traditional student senator.
Senator Karen Wilhite's need to gather post-election signatures just to be permitted to join points to a conundrum not faced by other would-be senators.
Regardless of whether the problem is a numerical lack of non-traditional students, prior commitments, community detachment or all of the above, ASUP needs to see this vacancy in particular as a challenge to rectify.
Allowing this seat in particular to remain vacant should be avoided, especially when considering the life-experience and views a non-traditional student brings.
The fact that ASUP designates a seat for a non-traditional student is a welcome decision that shows ASUP's desire to hear from this group.
By and large, non-traditional students prove that if you stick with your goals, you can achieve them; a much-applauded view in the Senate.
This group needs to be brought more into the fold.
The key, however, is that the responsibility for accomplishing this goal should not rest on just one person.
ASUP hopes that its one non-traditional senator will boost non-traditional student involvement.
This is not a sound strategy to bank on, especially since it hasn't worked for four years. A senator may not always be around to stir up interest.
Granted, in theory, one person can make a difference. However, this task is too extensive for one person to undertake, considering one who has to communicate with such a diverse student demographic. One senator cannot and should not be responsible for revitalizing a group that has remained out of the campus politics spotlight for four years.
The idea that ASUP would even see this as a viable solution is so obtuse we are incapable of appreciating the irony of it.
If anything, other ASUP senators should work as a team to increase non-traditional student involvement. They should have been doing it for the last four years.
The notion of freshmen senators chatting it up with 30-year-old students may seem strange, but one student in charge of that entire group is even stranger.
But senator communication can't alone be the reason for the senate seat vacancies.
In future years, ASUP should continue to go the extra mile to get the word out about the position, as the Executive Board did this year on behalf of Wilhite. While publicity and student engagement is an ongoing challenge for ASUP and nearly every student organization, non-traditional students are a group that is of particular need for an invite.
We agree that having a non-traditional senator is the first step, which is why this year is so important to build on the interest and reach out to a group passed over in recent years.
The fact that the current non-traditional senator has stamina is essential to this plan. Now, ASUP needs to keep that stamina going, lest it finds itself with the same vacant senate seat next year.
