Students aspiring to make a difference in their community often seek various avenues for involvement; they might join clubs, participate in Greek life or try to run for a position in the Associated Student Body. However, the service efforts of these students seldom attend to the most crucial needs of the university community. There must be a more effective means of doing so.
ASB has been successful at improving students’ day-to-day life at the University of Mississippi. In the annual State of the ASB Address on Feb. 24, ASB President Jack Jones asserted with confidence that “the state of our Associated Student Body is strong.”
Jones discussed recent ASB successes, ranging from money raised for the Christopher C. Holman Memorial Fund for student emergencies, improvements to the student experience at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, expansions in Mental Health First Aid training and more.
These accomplishments are remarkable, but a simple reality remains: There is only so much a student government can do.
While ASB greatly contributes to the betterment of student life, it cannot address many of the issues students face. Jones seemed to acknowledge this when he said that there are still “many challenges ahead, both internally and externally.”
Unfortunately, the problem lies beyond the capabilities of ASB. The organization can work to lower stadium hot dog prices and plaster the campus in posters all it wants, but that does nothing to help the students affected by, for example, the housing crisis in Oxford or insufficient parking on campus. To no fault of its own, there is not much it can do.
“We can’t control what happens in Washington, (D.C., or) Jackson. We can’t control what happens in the Lyceum,” Jones said.
I believe that if we want progress, we have to realize that the achievements of ASB only scratch the surface of what we can do ourselves; it is our responsibility as members of the university community to pick it up from there and become agents of change on our own.
When Jones said, “We can’t control what happens in Washington,” he was right. A student senate resolution alone will not make our rent any cheaper or build extra parking decks on campus. However, students are not completely powerless.
We can attend city government meetings, call and write to our legislators and organize to speak up about what matters to us as valuable members of the Oxford community. We can even make our voices heard to alumni, who can further call upon the university to take necessary action.
While ASB cannot directly solve some issues, thousands of informed students gathering together — “fierce advocates,” as Jones called us to be — can absolutely have an effect on the world around us.
The State of the ASB Address demonstrated that our student government is doing everything it can to better our time here at UM. Still, it is students who must work to improve our experience.
“You are important,” Jones said as he closed his address. “What you do matters.”
MacKenzie McDaries is a sophomore Arabic and political science major from Murfreesboro, Tenn.
