The Quad: USAC members and the distraction of social media

Daily Bruin If you’ve never paid much attention to the undergraduate student government, you’re in good company; the men and women of the council themselves seem to be a bit distracted as well.
Over the past six weeks, Daily Bruin Opinion columnists attended USAC meetings to observe council members and their social media and phone habits. For each member, we collected two metrics – whether they attended the meeting and whether they used social media during the meeting – in order to get an idea of how engaged council members were during their crucial weekly gatherings.
To be fair, it’s hard to focus for almost two hours straight, especially after a long day of work and classes. However, each council member makes up to $10,000 a year – all funded by student fees. They should be paying close attention to what’s going on during their meetings for just a few hours every week.
When measuring social media usage, we mainly relied on whether council members visited a social media site – such as Facebook or Twitter – on their laptops. We did not always have a clear view of each of the members in every meeting, however, so there’s a good chance we’ve missed out on some social media usage.
Internal Vice President Sabrina Zeigler and Community Services Commissioner Zack Dameron set the standard for engagement. Though she used her phone a couple of times, Zeigler stayed on task for almost the entirety of the meetings. And Dameron was by far the most focused member on council. From our observations, he never used social media during a meeting. In fact, he was often times seen taking down notes or intently going through the USAC funding matrix.
Most importantly, Dameron offered some of the more insightful points during council discussions. He showed that avoiding social media isn’t a superhuman feat and can ...


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