As far as ASMSU is concerned, nothing ever happened.

A Student Assembly vote to remove Great Issues from the organization's Programming Board and a undergraduate student vote to uphold that action were declared null and void when ASMSU decided in a closed session Thursday that the group never should have been removed in the first place.

"Technically, they weren't ever off," Nigel Scarlett, ASMSU vice chairperson for external affairs, said Sunday. "Whoever put the stuff in the bill didn't follow the procedure that Student Assembly follows when writing bills or code changes. The policies were never followed, so the bill was null and void."

Scarlett would not specify what technicalities made the original bill ineffective.

Assembly Chairperson Roger Ludy said in the meeting that ASMSU does not have to adhere to the Michigan Open Meetings Act and asked everyone in the room who did not sit on the assembly, including ASMSU adviser Cathy Neuman and staff members, to leave for an "executive" session.

An ASMSU attorney cited part 15.268, Section 8, Part H of the act, which states closing a meeting is allowed "To consider material exempt from discussion or disclosure by state or federal statute. He said the statute was attorney-client privilege.

It was during the closed session that members decided without a public vote to reinstate the group. After coming out of the closed session, the decision to reinstate the group was not made public.

Ludy did not return calls on Sunday.

"There wasn't any action that was taken," Scarlett said. "We didn't vote, and there wasn't a bill.

The reason it was closed was because our lawyers were there, just like when criminals are talking to their lawyers."

Neuman said Thursday the assembly could not take any action during executive session, and the Open Meetings Act trumps any parliamentary procedure the assembly would follow.

The act reads, "All decisions of a public body shall be made at a meeting open to the public."

Scott Lachman, vice chairperson for student funding, said he wasn't sure of the legitimacy of reinstating the group in that fashion.

"I'm very familiar with the (Student Assembly) code of operations," Lachman said. "To the best of my understanding of the code, if there isn't a bill or any specific record that anything happened, then I guess it didn't happen. I honestly don't know a good answer to that."

Lachman said ASMSU doesn't take minutes during executive session.

According to the Open Meetings Act, "Each public body shall keep minutes of each meeting (both closed and open) … and the purposes for which a closed session is held."

Great Issues co-director Stefan Lanwermeyer said Ryan McKnight, vice chairperson for Programming Board, informed him of the reinstatement.

"I haven't heard the specifics," Lanwermeyer said. "The reinstatement occurred through invalidating the original bill. Of course, that's not the reason why the bill was removed, but rather facilitated its removal."

McKnight could not be reached for comment Sunday.

ASMSU officials insisted that despite the presence of their attorneys, legal ramifications were not the reason for the reinstatement.

"If I were a student at MSU, I would be outraged," Lachman said.

"The student government spoke and the student body spoke, and both agreed that Great Issues should not be a part of Programming Board."

Ariana Segal, the Jewish Student Union representative to the assembly who introduced the bill to remove the group, said she could not remember much of the reasoning behind Thursday's decision.

"It was our professional decision to look at how it was all done and decide that it could have been done in a better way," Segal said.