LUCC meets each Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. in Riverview. Attend if you are able. Meetings are not always the most exciting way to spend an afternoon, but they decide important issues of relevance to many students.
If you live in a small house and don’t feel that your corresponding residence hall’s representative will reflect your views, if you want to be more informed than the average student, or if you just want to make sure your money is well spent, you should make a point of attending LUCC meetings.
You give $180 per year to LUCC, to be allocated by the council. Just “trusting” any organizational body with your money is a lazy, destructive pattern for adult life.
To be sure, much of LUCC meetings deal with the arcane matters that go into legislating every single detail of student life. Seldom will issues arise in the general council that seem particularly emotional, controversial, or exciting. But as liberal arts students, we ought strive to look beyond the surface of jargon and understand larger issues at work.
How are we to understand the complexities of world affairs if we are not even aware of why our activities fee is as high as it is? Many Lawrentians would be hard-pressed to name 10 organizations that utilize LUCC funding.
There seems to be a certain caliber of active, involved, or political students who join LUCC. As such, the danger becomes a council of similar individuals who don’t necessarily represent all types of students.
Does the council seem to fund more left-wing or right-wing organizations, in your opinion? As hard as many representatives may try, the residence hall experience is much different from the small house experience. Sometimes, to be heard, you have to speak up for yourself.
LUCC has many committees, each dealing with a particular set of issues. Those meetings are ideal forums for addressing common campus complaints. The campus newspapers are indeed an ideal forum for complaints, but we cannot legislate, only suggest. No matter how persuasive The Lawrentian‘s opinions are, a newspaper is not in a situation to change student rules or regulations.
Your representatives and elected officers would be happy to have something to add to an agenda. The onus, then, is on you, the Lawrence student, to bear the boredom of a typical meeting and become informed.
Most of the deciding political decisions known to mankind have been expressed in dry, committee-speak prose; learning to see through the jargon, understand larger issues regarding the way things work, and form opinions based on that understanding is a process central to the business world and adulthood on the whole.
Do you know who hears the final appeal in a judicial board matter? Are you aware of how to register a party? Do you know the steps to take, which LUCC has prescribed, to get an event on “This Week at Lawrence?” Perhaps you find it ridiculous that you cannot keep a dog or cat in your small house.
These may seem like small issues, but you might be surprised, if you actually sit down and read the student handbook cover to cover, at the number of rules LUCC actually makes.
A voicemail in September from Cole Delaney outlined a number of issues coming up this year, possibly including reading period and semester versus trimester systems. While the faculty ultimately decides many of these issues, it is up to the students to become aware of the ramifications of all of these points of view.
Passions still run high in the formal group housing debate, with Greeks and non-Greeks alike concerned that one side or the other is being favored in the process. But while alumni bring lawsuits against the university, student Greeks—and non-Greeks—should remember that LUCC, and its committee meetings, are open to the community. A group’s voice cannot be accurately heard unless that group speaks up.
Take advantage of your opportunity to understand these issues and form opinions. Perhaps an idea you express or an inequality you attempt to redress in a current or proposed rule could make life better for Lawrentians generations from now.