How can we say this nicely? Stop it, Ben Burgis, stop while you're already ahead. Burgis is a Western Michigan University graduate student making a bid for a seat on the MSU Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Socialist Party, the Green Party as well as Direct Action, a group most known by students for protesting the Iraqi war throughout East Lansing.
He has admitted that he doesn't expect to defeat one of the two incumbents up for re-election this November, but would use the seat to divest MSU of its ties to the Pentagon for military research and to register his disapproval of MSU President M. Peter McPherson's involvement in rebuilding Iraq's economy last summer.
"I'll do everything I can, but I'm not holding my breath," Burgis told The State News.
We don't expect to be the first to inform Burgis of this, but frankly, no one else is either.
When a citizen of any democratic society - be it by nation or municipality - reaches the voting age, it is his or her civic duty to take an active role in the government that represents them. Some of us vote, some donate money to a candidate and some put a placard in their yard. But most don't run for public office. And not because of their party affiliation, their politics or even their bank roll, but because a position in politics requires a certain agenda.
Hopefully, it is to serve and represent their constituency fairly. But never, especially in a position responsible for the livelihood of a Big Ten university, should agendas be personal. If Burgis truly does want the seat, effective involvement with MSU should be the platform, not the dissemination of grassroots politics.
To be sure, though, civic duty entails a person's duty to change the aspects of his or her government he or she sees unfit. If a person believes he or she could serve the public's best interest better than the incumbent, he or she should, by all means, run. But the key term to that chunk of logic is "public's best interest," the cornerstone of public office and a major motivation to politics across the board.
We have no issue with Burgis' radically liberal politics. We must, however, part company with his motivations in holding a seat that comes with so much responsibility in so many avenues of student, faculty and staff life. We applaud his efforts and sense of civic duty, but to change the world one university at a time, running on a platform of disagreeing with the board's head - McPherson - simply is impractical and entirely unlikely.
Trustees Joel Ferguson and Dee Cook essentially took two approaches to saying the same thing about Burgis in Thursday's edition of The State News. Ferguson put all cards on the table and said, "He's not a viable candidate." Cook, a touch more diplomatic, said "It is very, very tough to get elected to one of the major university boards without the backing of the statewide party."
Two quotes, two levels of frankness, but both hold same meaning. Burgis undoubtedly is fighting the good fight, but in the wrong ring, with the wrong opponent and in the entirely wrong arena. Running for office to be given a megaphone at the cost of student welfare is a detriment across the board - Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Green or otherwise.
