A SUNY Chancellor, a guy in a bee costume, a dramatic representation of a scene from ‘300.’ Combine that with a $56,000 budget ‘ this is the SUNY Student Assembly.

The supposed purpose of last week’s semi-annual SUNY SA conference was to gather about 250 student leaders to represent the interests of SUNY’s 435,000 students.

In reality, the thinly-veiled attempt at student engagement is ridiculous. The SUNY powers-at-be brazenly use (and seemingly always have used) the SUNY SA as a mouth-piece for administrative policies on campuses around the state.

The administrative agenda wasn’t the only item on the conference’s billing, as intriguingly useless workshops were used to fill out the three-day schedule. ‘Textbook Access and Affordability Workshop: How to Make the Informed Decision,’ taught student leaders how to comply with laws governing textbook access (rather than exploring how they might be changed). ‘The L.S.A.T.: it’s an AMBUSH!’ must have been particularly informative. There were practical courses like ‘Defining Diversity’ and a three-part ‘Anti-Discrimination Clinic,’ where ‘a boat, index cards and masking tape’ were used to teach the leaders of our respective student bodies to reject racism and homophobia.

But the workshops provided by two of the conference’s monetary sponsors were more unsettling. ‘What The New York Times Can Do For YOU!’ and ‘Food for Thought: Aramark’s at the Table!’ instructed students on how the newspaper and food conglomerates can improve New York campuses and why students should shell out some extra cash.

But put aside the harmless diversity training or unabashed corporatism. These pale in comparison to the real purpose of the conference ‘ the indoctrination of student leaders and the peddling of the administrative agenda.

With her head projected onto a giant screen in front of hundreds of attendees, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher used her ‘video conference’ to push the SUNY Empowerment Plan, Big Brother-style. Between eerie ‘happy birthday’ songs chanted by the crowd to the chancellor, and puff questions from the audience, Zimpher was at ease on her two-dimensional throne.

Though we’ve been generally supportive of her reform initiatives, Zimpher used what could have been a genuine chance for engagement with students to strong arm those present into supporting her policies. The SUNY SA, for Zimpher, is not a means of gauging student opinion ‘ it’s how she controls those opinions.

SUNY SA members fell in line. They either viewed the conference as useless and treated it as such, or merely wanted to stay on Zimpher’s good side, but either way they passed on their one real chance to speak student-truth to SUNY-power.

Zimpher’s proposed reforms to the structure of SUNY would be revolutionary. Precisely because of this, they merit a thorough airing-out by the student body public, not the shamelessly opaque sales pitch force fed at last week’s conference. Sure, her video conference with the SUNY SA had a question-and-answer section, but Zimpher knew her audience. She knew she was immune, which is the only reason she could afford to look transparent. If she were really open to honest debate and student input, she would invite criticism, rather than sycophancy.

We’d like to imagine a world where $56,000 is set aside for semi-annual, SUNY-wide conferences for campus media, where student-run publications could engage with Chancellor Zimpher and actually press her on the details.

But we won’t hold our breath.