Athletes as Student Leaders

Suzy Lieberman really pissed me off. Now, when I faced athletes as my Student Body VP, Senators, and Senate candidates, I was skeptical – mostly because I viewed them as thinly veiled efforts at some cheap votes for their parties, and vehicles for stealing Senate seats in districts you can’t win. But never did I think athletes couldn’t perform ably or even superbly as student leaders. And I sure as hell didn’t say so publicly.

Is Swamp that concerned about losing to Unite that they are willing to flood the Alligator with these anti-Siler letters, forcing Unite and their friends (including former VP Terry Jackson) to defend him?

Seriously, do they honestly believe athletes are the only students out there with school and extracurricular responsibilities that would leave SG something other than a top priority? How about law students, who are told not to take a job if they can help it because school is so demanding. How about nontraditional students with young families at home? How about poorer students who must work full-time to pay their tuition? Are we going to extend the presumed ban to all of these students?

Do they honestly believe that we believe SG – especially for a Vice President – is really a full-time job? A Senator’s job is, barely, one night a week. I seriously doubt the VP works 40 hours a week; although they can certainly make the job what they will.

Just think about it, though. The VP oversees 6-8 Cabinet chairs, and some 40-45 Cabinet directors, who all have 1 or more assistant directors underneath them, and many of the Cabinets are related or redundant. (Hence maybe why they have just 7-8 chairs to oversee them?) The VP has delegates a lot of his/her responsibility to dozens of people. I can’t imagine they have much to do other than hold office hours, make sure their people are doing work, and give a report weekly to Senate.

Surely an athlete – surely the captain of the football team – can manage that.

They done it before.