SGA, Our Dorms Ain't OK

You know you go to UMass when your department receives millions in funding for wireless sensor networks that track wild swamp turtles (YALLAH TURTLENET!) but you can't get a nice, hot shower in your dormitories. And somehow this has never been an issue in the SGA elections.

One half of the toilets in my dorm have some kind of leak in their pipes, often spraying (clean, thank God!) water from the handle when flushed. One third of the shower stalls have heating and water-pressure problems that force students to dunk ourselves under a meager stream of lukewarm water to get clean. One fifth of the faucets have a leak or a water-pressure problem. One fifth of the clotheswashers are out of order at any given time. One third of the clothesdryers don't work but remain labeled in-order to encourage hapless students to waste $1.25. Last year my entire floor suffered a massive mildew infestation in our ceiling with every snowstorm just because we happened to live on top of the building; we had to cover our noses and mouths for days but could still feel our eyes burn.

And the SGA does nothing! They don't even care! In all the hubbub over SGA elections, I've yet to see a single candidate make a nice campaign promise like "I'll stop spending money to have 3-hour SGA meetings on weekday evenings that keep everyone from their lives and don't end in an up-or-down vote so that we can have dry clothes and warm showers". Hell, the SGA appears completely unaware that we even have these problems. Apparently they're too busy fighting for lower student fees and the expansion of wireless internet access to the dorms (incredibly insecure, never send your personal information over such a connection) to realize that our basic infrastructure needs work.

I remember another place where a government with almost no popular support claimed to stand for the little guy while its constituents' basic infrastructure crumbled: Soviet Russia. The SGA aren't Communists, are they?