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Apparently. Well, at least according to the Daily Tar Heel. The basic premise of the article “Student Congress lacks female representation” is that the current system (i.e. students electing representatives to Student Congress) is not truly representative because there aren’t enough women. This paragraph is especially instructive:
“Leaders say the way members are elected and the way individuals seek seats make the organization fail to demographically or ideologically represent the student body.”
Hum… “the way members are elected” is failing us. Let’s ponder this for a second. The campus is split up into districts based on geography: south campus, mid-campus, north campus, etc… Students electing their own representatives somehow fails to be representative demographically or ideologically? Apparently, they’re claiming the districts are gerrymandered to return more conservative, male representatives than otherwise would be. How is this possible? At a school that’s overwhelmingly liberal and over 3:2 female to male, I’m not sure this is even possible.
The “way individuals seek seats” is also a trouble spot. Yes, attending a meeting, collecting twenty signatures, and putting up posters to garner votes is really the cause of a lack of representation. Holding elections? Man, so biased in favor of conservative males.
So really, the underlying claim is that democracy is failing us. Which is absolutely absurd.
Now, let’s consider the reason why they think democracy is not truly representative: because there aren’t enough women in Congress. No reason is given as to how this possibly affects Congress negatively. As I tried to point out in the article, the business that Congress conducts doesn’t have a male versus female perspective.
When Bounce magazine approaches Congress requesting money for the eight issues they publish a year, there isn’t a male-female divide on how much money to provide. If the event or item is vital to the mission of the organization, Student Congress must appropriate funds to them. The business of Student Congress is fairly objective. It’s not as if the “half-plus-one” rule for funding publications is a male construction and the addition of more females would alter that. Or is that really what the DTH is arguing?
That would be highly ironic considering the fact that, for the past few decades, extremist feminists have been trying to whitewash the fact that there are differences in the sexes, so apparently the DTH is allowing that fact. But, still, left unsaid is what differences would actually be…
The DTH is absolutely right. We should do away with biased, male-dominated elections and have our representatives appointed for us in order to ensure proper representation. This would be a better system than what we have now. In fact, we should just have national elections the same way. After all, women are also underrepresented in both houses of congress. Appointing our congressional representatives will help eliminate inequality in America, and make us a more fair, transparent and open society.
Well said! HAHA. Yes, why do we even bother with elections? Let's just cut to the chase and insure that the demographics are all properly represented. After all, the Congress members didn't win free and open elections or anything.
flawless
(Hey DTH, just a woman's perspective here but maybe we don't WANT to be in Congress. Maybe we have better things to do- like cooking and cleaning and babymaking?! hm?
Ever thought of that?)
Considering the ridiculous things I've seen and heard of in student congress, I'd say the lack of women in student congress reflects quite well on UNC women and their common sense and sense of priorities.
nah most of the women at unc are idiots.
Good generalizations about women and bad generalizations about men are accepted in our stupid society without question. Haha, just a pet peeve of mine . . . I believe generalizations are necessary and proper but it seems most people don't unless its a rather nasty remark about white males or a rather flattering remark about the fairer sex.
you mean complimentary generalizations about women and degrading generalizations about white middle class men
ah the struggles of the average american
Democracy can't do much about apathy.
"for the past few decades, extremist feminists have been trying to whitewash the fact that there are differences in the sexes"
do you care to cite these extremist feminists, or are you just making this up?
"there aren’t enough women in Congress. No reason is given as to how this possibly affects Congress negatively."
Do you think a 100% male or 100% white Congress would be just fine? If you can't think of any ways that this would negatively impact Congress itself or the student body as a whole then you're not thinking very hard.
I don't see how any of those quotes are whitewashing "the fact that there are differences in the sexes." Gloria Steinem thinks it's dangerous to study potential differences, probably because in her experience such studies are conducted by men and used to justify discrimination against women. I don't agree with her conclusion, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. You, on the other hand, seem very comfortable making broad generalizations about things you don't understand.
The 60s and 70s aren't really part of "the last few decades," are they? You are very adept at knocking over your little straw men! Your caricature of "extremist feminists" appears to be a product of your imagination… can you name any influential feminists or strains of feminist thought from the 80s, 90s or 00s?
Think some more about how a 100% white male congress might have a negative impact on campus and on the nature and practice of democracy on campus. If you're focused on gender differences in interpretations of Mason's Manual then you're (maybe intentionally?) missing the point.
Anthony,
The only reason I felt a need to comment on this article was because I /was/ one of the "leaders" mentioned, and I feel as though you may be misunderstanding what I was getting at. I do not think that there is any sort of gerrymandering involved here. What I meant when I said this was, quite simply, that there is a flaw in the way individuals seek seats in that, for some reason, we do not have a representative population seeking seats in Congress. This is a flaw in the system insofar as we, as a body, are not appealing equally to our constituents, which probably means that we aren't representing them totally fairly.
And who is to say how Congress' behavior would change? I personally like to think that more women would fundamentally change the atmosphere of Congress, as it changed the atmosphere of Jamestown, or the settlements out West. Not as dramatic, but you see what I'm getting at.
Could it be simply that the average UNC student doesn't want to be in congress? I would think congress is more likely to be filled with those who are interested in politics and have career aspirations in that field.
It would be interesting to see the statistics for members of student congress broken down by major to see which majors are most represented. I'm guessing this wouldn't be representative of the UNC population either.