ASMSU’s touted need for better student interaction with the MSU Board of Trustees has never been more clearly illustrated.

The Board of Trustees was invited by the university’s undergraduate student government to a forum Wednesday night to discuss the potential of a voting student on the board. But no trustees showed up, and only Trustee Dorothy Gonzales sent word that she wouldn’t be able to attend.

Through this frigid display of a lack of attention or concern, MSU’s trustees demonstrated ASMSU is absolutely right - there needs to be a better way for students to make their voices heard with the board.

Since August, ASMSU has been pushing the possibility of placing a voting student on the Board of Trustees, a position held at many other universities in the Big Ten. So far, they’ve had little luck with the proposal, as the measure requires a change to Michigan’s Constitution. To do so, ASMSU would need a petition signed by about 302,711 voters - 10 percent of the voters from the last gubernatorial election. And to get that, they’d need a lot of money. Other Michigan universities have tried to do this in the past and failed because of a lack of funds.

We see numerous problems with a plan for a student trustee, including passing a constitutional amendment and finding a student who can accurately represent the entire campus.

But ASMSU clearly has a valid point. Our student government, recognized by the trustees and the student body, asked for guidance and an open discussion, only to be flat-out ignored.

The incident builds into ASMSU’s argument that the Board of Trustees does not always listen to students. Perhaps trustees listen to a few words before their monthly meetings, but actual dialogue goes unheeded and disregarded.

This is not to say working to get a student trustee on the board is a workable option and should be pushed for right away. It’s no more possible now than it was a few months ago.

ASMSU may need to step back from bantering with the Board of Trustees and start trying to rally support from the student body, a herculean task in itself. Students have mostly been shown to be apathetic at best in the past, and ASMSU will have difficulty garnering any kind of backing from students.

We aren’t going to see a student elected to the Board of Trustees for quite some time. It’s an issue that may as well be ignored on its own merit - changing the state Constitution is a daunting task and the energies that would be spent on this measure would be better used elsewhere.

But it’s obvious there is a need to find some way to get the Board of Trustees to work more with students than it does now. The university is for the students, and they should not be ignored.