When in the course of academic events it becomes necessary for one student body to strengthen the political bands which have connected them with each other and to reassume the power of the Wellman Document, the equal station to which the Laws of the University of Massachusetts and the UMass Administration entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of that student body requires that they should understand the causes which impel them to vote.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all students are enrolled equally, that they are endowed by their payment of tuition with certain inalienable rights, that among these are dorm life, dining and the pursuit of competitive textbook prices. That to secure these rights, governments shall be instituted among students, deriving their just powers from the consent of their classmates. That whenever any form of government becomes idle or destructive of these ends, it is the right of the students to alter and change it, to institute new leadership, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to seem likely to affect their safety and happiness.

Chancellor Holub, indeed, would agree that student governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience seems to indicate that students are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by altering the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and fee increases, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute incompetence, it is their right, it is their duty, to recalibrate such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient suffering of this student body; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present Student Government Association (SGA) administration is one of repeated injuries and incompetence, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute domination over this student body.

In every stage of this incompetence, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. An SGA administration, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define such incompetence, is unfit to further preside over a hampered student body.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our classmates in the SGA. We have warned them from time to time of attempts to by their executive to ignore wholly justified and understandable action by various legislative bodies and RSOs here at UMass. We have reminded them of our enrollment and our settlement here. We have appealed to their basic justice and reason, and we have implored them by the ties of our common academic status to disavow these abuses and this incompetence, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They have been deaf to the voice of justice and reason. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces their replacement, and hold them, as we hold the rest of the student body, accountable in their actions, but friends and classmates nonetheless.

We, therefore, the students of UMass, in general congress, assembled, casting our ballots for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in name, and by the authority vested in us by the Wellman Document (a constitution and set of bylaws which encapsulates in law all of those rights we should and must enjoy and defend as students of this institution), declare that we are a student body void of shackles to any one set of interests, and that we must solemnly vote for and declare for ourselves a new set of principled, competent and virtuous leaders, who should and must be accountable to all students, that they swear off the incompetency of administrations past and present (on both word and action), and that our bonds with the previous administrations ought to be and are totally dissolved; and that as our new, duly elected leaders, our new SGA administration will carry with it the full might and trust of the student body, defend all of the rights which have been guaranteed, pursue an agenda beneficial to all members of the student body, and respect all aspects of the Wellman Document and various SGA bylaws for their substantive impact on the day-to-day lives of all undergraduates at this most esteemed academic institution.

And to lend credibility to this vote, you should probably all check your emails for the message you have received from the school, explaining exactly how to properly go about casting your ballot online. If you are more comfortable casting your ballot on paper, you may visit the SGA elections table in the Campus Center and fill out a paper ballot. For the support of this vote, with a firm reliance on the protection of Administrative Providence, we mutually cast our ballots together.

Basically, all I am saying is that you should vote, and that when you do, you should vote for the candidates who represent a departure from the laughable incompetency which has plagued the SGA executive for years. In case you are wondering, in no way have I lifted any of this writing from another source. I’m insulted that you would even suggest such a thing. On an entirely unrelated note, if you have some spare time, read our Declaration of Independence. It’s exciting stuff.

SIC SEMPER TYRANIS

Charlie Felder is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].