Contempt and criticisms characterizeall kind of political and elective positions anywhere in the world. Some of these criticisms are warranted while others are mere pejoratives of prejudiced minds. S.O.M.U has had a fair share of criticisms and all who have served inSOMU have not been spared, they all have been demonized as incompetent ingrates only motivatedto “kukula pesa zetu”. Some SOMU officials are evidently very mediocre and deserve to be criticized. But it’s not justified to condemn and criticizejust for the sake of criticism and condemnation as it is evident that many are hell-bent in portraying SOMU as unresponsive, unproductive and a near useless organization. This is the single story that most have of SOMU/SGC. Misallocation of student funds, underperformance, unfulfilled promises, unresponsive members are some of the allegations making up this single story of SOMU, some of this might be true but making it the definitive story of SOMU is not okay!This single story of SOMU demoralizes the truly committed leaders; this single story will rob some of them from the credits they deserve and their dignity, this single story denies many the opportunity toparticipate in SOMU activities or even running for a given post as recently experienced where only single contestants showed up for thepost of Editor and the Organizing secretary respectively. This single story will make many blind to any kind of achievement by SOMU. How can SOMU be vocal in the national politics if it does not have the support of the students because of the contempt it is held?SOMU comprises of not only theStudent Governing Council(SGC), which everyone seems to criticize but it also comprises affiliate bodies like MUABS, MUACU, RED CROSS, MUCSA thus the criticisms do not spare such well meaning organizations as well.SOMU’s duties is simply to act as the link between the student body and the administration, to be the mouth piece of the student body and air their grievances, to work for the students and with the administration, to follow up in making enquiries and propose new ideas and bring down the administration to be student friendlyand responsive to their needs. SOMU ensures that all semester activities are conducted on time and successfully and many sacrifice both their time and energy towards this end.The expectations that we have of SOMU is an unrealistic one, we expect SOMU to do things magically, to fix that blown inflorescent tube in your room almost immediately (and you have not reported to anyone), tomake sure transcripts don’t have re-sits on them, to make the queues at the mess be shorter, to make surethat the library is fully stocked, to make sure that there is a television in every hostel. When they don’t meet this expectations the “robin hood” style, all you get is very cruel accusations against it. The roles of Maseno university administration and that of SOMU is not the same, SOMU might not do some things because it is out of theirmandate. We should all strive to recognize the correct boundaries to prevent both the exaggerated disdain, contempt for and help restore the confidence that we should have in this organization.Limited resources, falling confidencein, lack of support from student’s body and the bottleneck of bureaucracy in addressing student’s grievances and even raising funds for their activities are some problems that affects the performance of SOMU immensely.SOMU members on the other hand should strive to embrace ethics, integrity and serve with diligence, ridthemselves of tribal alliances, corruption and the culture of mediocrity which greatly hinders their performance and till they do that it is no doubt that the criticism and mistrust will always be directed to their activities.
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