The Orbis

Issue date: 9/11/07 Section: News/Features

The idea that student government, in its current incarnation at Vanderbilt and many other American universities, might actually stake out a position or take decisive action against a school administration or even public legislators is a difficult situation to imagine ever actually occurring. This isn't to take the unsophisticated shot at student government which argues simply that they "don't do anything that affects our lives" - certainly this is false. None the less, it seems rather uncontroversial to assert that a general strike, a sit-in or a widely attended protest organized by Vanderbilt Student Government would be totally anomalous to their conception of business as usual.

There are many ways of attempting to explain why this is the case; however, I will not attempt to solve that dilemma here. Rather than trying to deconstruct the particulars of our own student government, perhaps a more illuminating undertaking would be to place it in a global context. What does student government look like in other places in the world? How are they organized and what kinds of things do they do?

Unlike the United States, private institutions constitute a small part of the system of higher education in most Western European countries; most all universities are public. This mere fact does not suggest how schemes of student government differ, but is an illuminating starting point for drawing the distinction. For example, "student unions" in the Netherlands take a form more analogous to labor unions, and they are separate from university governance insofar as they were not created by the university administrations. In contrast, most major private U.S. universities have student governments that are actually chartered by the Board of Trust or Reagents which has executive control of the school. In this way, our structure of student government isn't an independent force for representing student interests but an organization with powers both circumscribed and granted by the ruling body of the university.

In general, organization of students in most other countries takes a decidedly more politically confrontational form. Many student unions abroad are a stand-alone force to be reckoned with. Indeed, many administrative and legislative officials have even sought to weaken their influence and power. In the mid-1990s, for instance, British Prime Minister John Major's conservative government made several unsuccessful attempts to dramatically reduce the power and influence of student unions in the United Kingdom. Like some forms of organized labor, and other interest groups set up to protect the interests of various sectors of society, student unions are often vigilant and active protectors of education rights and student well-being.

Continued...

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