Thomas Jefferson, one of my personal heroes — and one hell of a legislator — once said, “Power is not alluring to pure minds.” If Jefferson were to sit in on some of the backdoor politicking currently going on in the Student Assembly, he would think that our minds are as dirty as a New Jersey sewer. Thus, when I evaluate the actions of the S.A., I like to follow the logic of a different politician: the ancient Roman judge, Lucius Cassius, who would repeatedly ask himself, “Cui bono?” which literally means “To whose benefit?”

As I think back on my career on the S.A., I could recall one clear example in which I had to use Cassius’ dictum. This occurred when S.A. members were debating their own election rules last year. When I looked for the minutes of this Dec. 4 meeting, I was surprised that this was the only meeting last year in which there were no minutes taken. Luckily Jared Feldman ’11 had nothing better to do this week than to transcribe the audio recording of that meeting. What he found was nothing less than astonishing.

At that meeting, where Michael McDermott ’09, the then-director of elections, explained the new system of open elections for the president and executive vice-president, he was met with flood of skepticism from his less altruistic colleagues. Natalie Raps ’12, the then-Arts and Sciences representative, even proposed amending the election rules so that “each candidate on the presidential slate must have served on the Assembly for at least one semester.” Unfortunately, Raps was not alone in wanting to limit the candidates in these elections to current-S.A. members. Future presidential candidate Tony Miller ’10, for example, fought vigorously for this amendment. And former representative Emlyn Diakow ’11 asked that the S.A. parliamentarian Scott Purdy ’10 be included in this restrictive amendment, reasoning, “I think Scott would be a good president.” Five months later, Scott ran for president with Emlyn as his vice.

Fortunately, democracy won in the end, and these self-serving voices were silenced by members like Vice President Nikhil Kumar ’11, who quipped, “If we do this, then we are basically limiting this election to the people in this room right now.” Kumar’s comments were aimed at those S.A. representatives who do not wish to see outsiders pair-up to challenge the status quo. These representatives selfishly deny the value of any leadership experience outside of being one of the23 people who show up to The Straight on Thursday nights.

Unfortunately, this was not the only time I had to analyze S.A. members’ actions in terms of “Cui bono?”

The recent announcement by Executive Vice President Ola Williams ’10 raises many of the same questions for me. As was reported in The Sun yesterday, Williams has accrued 4.5 absences out of the 11 meetings thus far, including three consecutive absences, in clear violation of the S.A. attendance policy, which states, “Any voting members who are absent for three consecutive regularly scheduled meetings or for six regularly scheduled meetings cumulatively during their term, will lose their right to vote and their position will be considered vacated.”

Despite publishing Williams’ recent statement, however, The Sun’s article also omitted some absolutely critical information, as well as incorrectly cited the S.A.’s charter. While The Sun stated that the charter demands attendance only from VPs, the charter, in fact, upholds this attendance policy for any voting member. This clear violation of the S.A. charter begs the question: Why did Kumar — as vice president of internal operations, who records attendance and fills vacancies — choose not to take the appropriate steps to replace Williams back in October when Williams first violated the charter? Furthermore, why is Williams allowed to remain on the S.A. as a voting member despite the fact that he had committed this violation 28 days ago, to be exact? The only answer I could think of is that the Executive Board places loyalty to each other over loyalty to their constituents.

At this point, I have laid out a couple past examples of how S.A. members often stray from what Jefferson dubbed a “pure mind,” and I have no doubt that there will be many more of these instances to come. I fear that it might come too soon, though, as Director of Elections Nikki Junewicz ’10 will be presenting the Election Committee’s recommendations for an overhaul of the current system this afternoon.

Junewicz’s proposed resolution will abolish slates for the president and vice-president, and replace them with separate elections for each using the hare system method in which you rank the candidates. We should all be skeptical about this proposal, or any proposal coming from Junewicz’s committee, simply because it is comprised of senior members of the S.A. and the University Assembly, people who obviously have close relations to members already on the S.A. In other words, the people who decide the rules of the game are friends with the key players.

Additionally, it remains peculiar to me why the system currently needs revamping. According to McDermott, the former director of elections, the new system was implemented to ensure that the president and vice president would be able to “cooperate” and in order “to get more publicity for the election.” Both of McDermott’s points turned out to be true, as current President Rammy Salem ’10 and Williams have been jointly committed to a single platform and the S.A. had the largest voter turnout in years.

Hence, I am having a hard time understanding the impetus behind Junewicz’s proposed changes. So, then I asked myself “Cui bono?” At first, I came up with nothing; however, after speaking with some insiders, I found an answer.

The proposed solution would apparently allow rising juniors on the S.A. to gain experience as vice president before running for president. This rationale for a new election system proves my point that sometimes S.A. members think more about their own advancement than they do about their constituents. I fear that if such a system were implemented, the result would be that the S.A. will have less than the 14 candidates that ran for these two seats last year. But perhaps such a system is exactly what this exclusive club wants.

While I have presented many examples of the S.A.’s dubious past behavior, as well as my fear for the future, I want to stress that the S.A. is the student body’s primary vehicle to express our opinions to the administration in a formal manner, and for that reason alone it should be highly valued. Today, when the S.A. debates the new election rules, we should all hope that our representatives think about us, their constituents, and then ask themselves, “Cui bono?”

Andrew Brokman ’11, a junior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, is a student representative to the University Assembly and a former S.A. transfer representative. He may be reached at adb239@cornell.edu. Guest Room appears periodically.