MSU’s undergraduate student government has a lot of questions to answer if it hopes to restore credibility to the organization and any of its referendum items to be voted on during this week’s universitywide elections.
It seems ASMSU leaders will make an effort to do that at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Wonders Hall Kiva, but it’s going to be a tough task, given the organization is less than a week removed from a major student election debacle that forced referenda to be rescheduled.
The All University Elections Commission requested Wednesday that Student Life cancel universitywide elections concerning its organization, citing computer glitches and an apparent lapse of communication between the two groups.
The polls now will open at 8 a.m. Tuesday and close at noon Saturday. Students can vote by logging onto www.student-elections.msu.edu.
ASMSU is asking undergraduates to renew its ability to collect a $13 tax per student each semester and to approve a $3 tax increase, which would boost its semesterly intake to $16 per undergraduate.
But even with an extra week to plead its case for more money, ASMSU has failed to adequately do so. In fact, it has only hurt its cause by making a mess and mockery of the electoral process.
Aside from claiming they need more money to keep up with rising legal service costs and to dole out to registered student organizations, ASMSU leaders have failed to provide any hard data of exactly how much money they need and where exactly they need it.
A $3 increase is a random number. Perhaps the organization only needs $2 more or maybe it needs an extra $5, but students don’t know because ASMSU leaders have failed to carry out financial research responsibly.
In addition to its tax proposals, ASMSU is asking students to approve language changes to its constitution and elect representatives to the next academic year’s sessions of its two assemblies.
The elections were postponed a week because computer glitches allowed students to vote for the wrong number of representatives to Academic Assembly and the All University Election Commission claimed the wording of ballot issues on the computer program was different than it had approved. In one case, the group claimed it had never even seen one proposed referendum item.
The commission, created by ASMSU, is designed to operate as an independent voice to oversee that student elections concerning the organization are carried out fairly.
And while the commission’s concerns about the computer glitch were warranted, its concerns over wording changes were petty and irresponsible. The commission failed to do its job and has helped cause a huge electoral mess.
Voters should be wary of allowing ASMSU to raise its tax. And given the organization’s most recent debacle, it wouldn’t be surprising if students considered not renewing ASMSU’s ability to tax at all.
ASMSU leaders have their work cut out for them if they are going to convince students otherwise before the polls close at week’s end.
