A break from class just doesn’t feel official until an ASUO senator resigns. This time it was Carina Miller, a veteran of campus politics whose loss will be felt far greater than any other departure this year.
Her resignation brings many mixed feelings. Anger or disappointment are usually the first reactions when a senator quits, especially one with so much experience and knowledge of the ways of the ASUO. Miller’s withdrawal is hardly a surprise, however. She had threatened to do it for a while, and it’s understandable how she could be burned out after all the time she’s given to student government in the past two years.
The situation revives the perennial question of why the Senate’s retention rate is abysmal compared to that of the president’s staff. In an interesting twist, Miller was the first appointed senator to resign this year; the five previous members were elected. Miller’s hiring was far from ordinary. After coming in fourth in last year’s ASUO presidential primary, she went public with accusations that she was passed up for the job of President Emma Kallaway’s chief of staff because the hiring was rigged from the start.
The charge made its way into a grievance filed by Kallaway’s general election opponent Michelle Haley, who Miller befriended last spring despite their disjointed political leanings.
Miller insisted that she would have made a better chief of staff, but that she would settle for a Senate seat instead. Even after the repeated printed jabs, Kallaway’s Lincolnesque appointment of her rival was probably the best Senate selection the ASUO president made this year.
At the time, one might have assumed that Kallaway opted to keep an enemy close and indebted, but cynical calculations really aren’t her style. Kallaway probably knew Miller had the necessary skills and would make a better senator than the anemic list of applicants without a year’s experience on the body. If there was any political consideration in appointing Miller, it could have been an attempt to keep a coalition together after a difficult election in which student unions and programs were fractured in the primary.
And if watching out for student programs was the goal, Miller performed brilliantly, though she could hardly be considered Kallaway’s ally. Miller publicly refused to retract any of her denunciations of Kallaway’s choice for a chief of staff, and joined her former colleagues on the Students First slate in doing whatever possible to make Kallaway’s life a little harder.
She voted against other appointees and rarely supported the ASUO Executive on anything.
But Miller never stopped being a voice for students. Whenever a debate took place about something other than the personality conflicts of the most inside players, Miller was on the right side. She is a board member of the United States Student Association and does not join her conservative friends in criticizing the national student lobby.
She was always a fierce defender of student programs. When even most progressive senators spent lots of time parsing a group’s spending requests and skewering every budget line, Miller would remind the body of the inherent value of student programming and the purpose of Senate surplus funds.
There will always be speculation about the future ambitions of leaders such as Miller, especially at the beginning of winter term when the next election has practically begun.
She is still very close with the inner circle of the Students First slate who will undoubtedly come up with another candidate this year.
It seems unlikely that Miller will be that candidate, however. If she wants to run for higher office by quitting halfway through her term, she should check out how well that played for the former governor of Alaska.
But really, it seems she’s done, which is unfortunate when so few people are willing to step up and accomplish anything for the student body. Even fewer are as strong-willed as Miller, though at times her emotions got in the way of her success. Just looking at the executive’s last few appointments shows how difficult it can be to find good candidates. Sen. Mercedes White Calf, whose confirmation brought much criticism, is already a solid defender of student programs. The less controversial appointment of graduate and law Sen. Ben Fisher may not have been as big of a headache, but he does not yet seem to understand the purpose of the incidental fee in advancing student interests and power.
Every seat is difficult to fill. This one will be harder than most.
[email protected]