Dear ASMSU,

You've gotten a lot of coverage on our page lately, and suffice it to say, it has been less than flattering.

Well, we might as well just come out and say it: You guys have looked positively incompetent. So we've gotta know, what's up with you?

As MSU's undergraduate student government, first, you get rid of Great Issues because you overreacted to a speaker it brought to campus, which you funded. Then, you held a meeting to get rid of it and conveniently lost the minutes. And now, after bellicose statements supporting the decision to get rid of Great Issues and an election in which few votes were cast, you're declaring the bill void and acting like nothing happened.

You're kidding, right?

Your excuse for the sudden reinstatement of Great Issues — a decision, it bears mentioning, you came to in a closed meeting in the presence of an attorney — is that because procedures weren't followed, the original decision technically never occurred, so Great Issues was never dismantled.

Even better, Nigel Scarlett, ASMSU vice chairperson for external affairs, defended your decision by saying whoever "put the stuff in the bill" didn't follow proper procedure. C'mon. You guys wrote the bill! How can you now claim you didn't follow proper procedure?

You can't just pretend none of this happened. Suddenly undoing what you've done and declaring that it technically never happened is amazingly immature and irresponsible.

You've got to acknowledge your mistake, not just act like it never happened.

Look, you can't just sit there and lose documents because less than 9 percent of the student population voted in your election, or presumably is aware you exist. You may not have any kind of meaningful oversight, but people are still watching your actions.

And you've really got to stop trying to silence expression. Going after Great Issues because it brought a controversial speaker to campus? OK, sure, you've got control over Great Issues. But you can't just dismantle an organization because of one incident.

Your attempts in the last year to exercise control where you have none also bother us. In a continuing pattern of reaching for authority where it doesn't exist, it must be pointed out that you passed a bill in an effort to alter an editorial policy of an independent newspaper, The State News. In the bill, you threaten to lobby for The State News' funding to be cut unless the paper changes its internal policies to suit your demands.

You've got to get your priorities in order. First, figure out a way to run your own organization without humiliating yourselves and coming off like a bad, legislative "Laurel and Hardy" routine before you start meddling in other peoples' organizations. It seems only fair.

At a university, students need a voice, and they need proper representation. You know this better than anyone. But it has to be a voice that knows what it's doing, cares about what it's doing and knows how to do it. So far, you're kinda 0 for 3.

Now, we understand this was the last meeting of the old guard and there will be new people coming in. That's wonderful news, and we hope the new crop of student representatives will come in, look at your past mistakes (this term alone should make for ample reading) and learn from them. Please. The previous crop already has driven your fine organization into the ground. Only you can repair the damage.

And take heart. After all, you could hardly do any worse.

Good luck.

Love,
The State News