Well, it came out of frustration and stress because, unfortunately, that’s how my body deals with those emotions. The salty drops were merely pooling at the edges of my tear ducts as I left the conference room, but by the time I’d gotten down the hall to my office, they were racing down my cheeks, probably leaving streaks in my blush.
Stress crying is a lot more dramatic than sad crying. Sadness is an uninhibited emotion, so when you cry, you feel comfortable allowing the tears to flow freely. But crying because you’re stressed only adds to your frustration, so as you’re trying to hold it in, you end up forgetting to breath and subsequently hyperventilate in between loud restrained sobs. At least, that’s how I do it.
It’s a quite flattering form of expression.
And as I continued to choke, doing that thing where you involuntarily inhale through your nose so tightly it makes your whole body shake, while waiting for the elevator right outside the room I’d just left, it must have become apparent to the meeting’s remaining participants that I was a tad upset.
The meeting was held for The Crow’s Nest and Harborside Activities Board # both university entities funded by student activity and service fees # to defend their budgets for the next school year. Both parties missed the first hearing, held the Monday after spring break, where the appropriations committee made decisions without us. Understandable, since we were invited to attend and failed to show up. However, appropriations notified us of the first hearing through an email sent at 1:11 a.m. on the first Saturday of spring break # a time when we’re all so anxiously awaiting school-related emails. As someone who receives a good 80 messages a day, between my personal and professional accounts, that one’s inevitably going to get buried in my inbox.
I saw the email about the second hearing and made plans to attend, though I had to be at work (because, yes, we all have other jobs) 30 minutes away from campus, an hour and a half after the meeting was set to begin. While waiting for quorum (the fancy word meaning the minimum number of committee members required to make decisions) to show up, our 4 p.m. start time turned into 4:20. Then we had to go through a bunch of superfluous procedural stuff, such as announcing that no one had any announcements to make.
Though some HAB representatives also had prior obligations to get to, and suffered equally from the committee’s late start, we were scheduled to go first, and I made sure we did.
So, when it was our turn to speak, my coworker and I spouted on about why some part of our budget should be moved to another part where it could be used more effectively. After letting us talk for about five minutes, the committee finally let us know the part of our budget we were talking about didn’t actually exist. It was written into the draft, but nothing in the draft was approved. I didn’t know that because I missed the first hearing. Therefore, everything I’d intended to defend at this hearing was imaginary.
I’ve never been in Student Government. I don’t go to Student Government meetings. I have a hard enough time just reading through general assembly minutes without wanting to punch through my computer screen. I don’t like waiting for acknowledgement before speaking, and I don’t like being called Ms. Killette. Let me hold onto my youth for a few more years before turning me into a “Ms.” I know it’s done out of respect, but let’s stop pretending to be adults here. We’re college students # we’ve never been further from the real world.
Anyway, being essentially told to shut my mouth and wait my turn is not what made me cry. That came from having my knowledge as a leader and the integrity of my organization questioned by people who knew nothing about the entity they were making budgetary decisions for. As representatives of our student body, I would expect SG members to at least make an attempt at acquiring such knowledge.
Through the course of the semester, I was told by several SG members to think about what I wanted to see in next year’s budget. But no one offered to talk with me about it. And ultimately, our new budget remained the same as this year’s. If that was going to be the outcome all along, why was I wasting energy asking for more? It was a helpless situation for which I was hopelessly unprepared for and at odds. And that’s why I cried.
In about five weeks, I’ll be abdicating my editor’s throne and graduating. The idea is simultaneously comforting and disconcerting. What happens to The Crow’s Nest won’t affect my future, but I’d hate to see a year’s worth of hard work, late nights and more stress than I knew I could handle go to waste. At this point, money isn’t even an issue. We functioned on $51,000 this year and the new staff will be able to do it next year. It’s SG’s willingness to facilitate fair and understanding relationships with other student-run entities that has me worried.
editor@crowsneststpete.com
