Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Our Opinion

While the Collegian does not agree with last week’s monumental Student Government Association decision to declare its autumn election Unconstitutional, rumors of a concerted legal response by the decision’s opposition trouble us.

There is no denying that last week’s decision was fraught with error. The Judiciary was forced to make a horrific decision because members of the SGA Administration felt the need to press very piddling issues. Those Administration members were not concerned with the well being of the student body and the fact that they would work against an elected Senate is suspect. But that decision has been made, and while those members of the SGA Administration need to seriously consider the action they have chosen to take, one that will certainly end up hurting students far more seriously than it ever helps them, those who will suffer most immediately, the fired Senators, cannot consider taking significant legal action.

Right now, Senators who were elected and cried foul when they lost their jobs because they could no longer work for the good of the student body. The fact that they would then propose to sue the University or the Student Government Association totally undercuts their claim that they have the best interests of students in mind. Clearly, they don’t, and if they reduce themselves to the sort of petty politicking practiced by their opposition, they then lose the ability to claim the high ground against that same opposition.

Our reporters have had a difficult time getting access to, or at least on the record information about, proposed lawsuits. Again, because this case has been surrounded by so many half-truths, students who propose to grind the entire SGA to a halt while not even clarifying why they plan to do so are only hurting themselves and their tenuous position.

This political bickering has got to stop. It is not beneficial to the students. Unfortunately, as always, the most forgotten group on this campus in this whole student political fiasco has been that very group. For elected officials to completely lose sight of their responsibilities to those that elected them isn’t just troubling, it is embarrassing.

A Student Government Association is supposed to be a good thing, a representative body that does progressive work for the good of the students. It is supposed to be a helpful organization that can take the will of the students that care to higher people in higher places, but now? Now our SGA is flailing in deep water and it doesn’t have the protective floaties it needs. Because they have forgotten their responsibilities, students will suffer.

And it will be Registered Student Organizations that go on without budgets and a student body that goes on without representation that will truly suffer. Students who claim to act on the best behalf of other students should back that claim up; The Daily Collegian truly hopes to see an end to this petty and unproductive bickering. If we must wait through new elections, let us wait and hope that the next time around, the SGA will remember its true responsibility: the students that elected it.

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