At Michigan State University, it isn’t hard to find people who scratch their heads at the mention of the Associated Students of MSU, the undergraduate student government, let alone students who know who the student body president is.
Knowledge on which bills are passed at each ASMSU meeting and where they’re at in the decision making process is likely going to be exclusively found in possession of those who are members of the organization.
But it’s not like ASMSU meetings are shrouded in mystery either. Their meetings (barring some closed sessions) are open to the public, with dates and times posted online. So whether students aren’t properly informed about student government or simply don’t care, the question remains: what do ASMSU bills do?
For clarity (as well as some personal opinion), I spoke over the phone with Ahmed Amir, the current vice president of academic affairs. Right off the bat, he told me that he cannot speak as a member of or on behalf of ASMSU, but can speak in a strictly personal capacity to his experience with the organization.
Amir first joined as a representative of the Muslim Students Association with the desire to advocate for Muslim students on campus, which is something he did through the passing of multiple ASMSU bills, including 60-30 and 60-38.
These bills advocated for the university to show more support for Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and protect those same students from doxxing.
Before bills go to the general assembly to be voted on, they go through one of three committees: academic, policy or finance.
The Academic Committee focuses on anything related to academic governance, undergraduate education and student life. The Policy Committee deals with internal ASMSU policy or anything related to national and world politics. The Finance Committee focuses aptly on ASMSU finances and funds.
In these committees, amendments are made to the bill where applicable, and if it passes, it’s voted on in the general assembly, which is composed of representatives from each of the degree-granting colleges as well as representatives from the Council of Racial and Ethnic Students and Council of Progressive Students.
Again, it’s not much different from how bills are passed at a national level.
Where ASMSU’s process diverges from national politics, however, is what happens to bills after they pass. ASMSU bills that advocate for university change don’t technically have to move on to bigger things once they’re passed. They aren’t handed off to the Board of Trustees like a House bill would move to the Senate after it’s voted on.
The new bill is simply there.
Because the key word in ASMSU bills is "advocate." That’s the extent of their power. It is the responsibility of ASMSU representatives to further schedule meetings and work through the institution to get their objectives materialized, no matter how much time it took to write, revise, vote on, and ultimately pass a bill.
But what does "advocate" mean?
Amir used the recently passed Bill 61-18 as an example, which advocates for a suicide prevention and rehabilitation training program seminar to be required for all students to take before they graduate, similar to the Sexual Misconduct and Relationship Violence training that students are already required to take.
After the bill passed, Amir took it to academic governance and told them that the bill is something students want. He followed up with the question, "How can we bring this to administration?"
The bill is then given to various departments of academic governance, eventually landing in the University Council, where it is voted on. If it passes, Amir said the University Council may bring it to administration to implement.
The ASMSU website provides updates at each step of the process, showing who is responsible for a bill’s implementation, what meetings have taken place with administration and actions that have been taken thus far.
Sometimes those actions yield change.
Fall break, for example, was established in 2021 following work by ASMSU.
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But such examples seem to be the exception.
Because administration doesn’t technically have to even consider ASMSU’s bills. This means that when administrators don’t want to take action, they also don’t have to.
On the issue of divestment for example, ASMSU legislation has called for the university to stop funding Israel, and they’ve been met with little to no movement by administration.
It’s here that flaws in the system become apparent, something that both Amir and I have noticed.
"I think in some respects and in some areas, they are very open to shared governance," Amir said. "But when it comes to certain topics, it falls on deaf ears."
And in a university where each and every student has a material stake, students should have a genuine say in what policies are being amplified. Yet no matter how many meetings they hold or bills they pass, ASMSU has no official power in administrative decisions beyond advocating.
But Dean of Students Allyn Shaw told me that administrators do indeed take the bills seriously, as he said they are "showing what is important to the students at that particular time."
He added that the ASMSU Office of the President meets with senior administrators every month. Shaw feels that overall, students should be confident that their voices are being heard, he said.
The tricky bill implementation process does not render ASMSU entirely ineffective, however.
Looking at the numerous bills that ASMSU passes each semester, funding allocation for different initiatives and organizations make up a decent portion of the bills passed, which don’t need to go through higher levels of governance to be implemented. ASMSU also provides free legal services, calculator rentals and a late-night Safe Ride program.
But in order for student government to meaningfully represent a constituency regardless of the topic, there needs to be some kind of institutional change, whether that be the implementation of an ASMSU representative on the Board of Trustees or a process where board members are required to vote on ASMSU legislation after it passes.
This is easier said than done.
Establishing a student position on the board would require a change to the Michigan Constitution, ASMSU President Connor Le told me, adding that it would require an ASMSU bill to go through the Michigan House and Senate.
That’s not totally unprecedented. ASMSU has a history of passing bills that advocate for larger governmental policies as well as establishing relationships with state officials.
At an ASMSU meeting earlier this semester, the newly elected vice president for governmental affairs spoke briefly about her desire to forge stronger relationships with state representatives in downtown Lansing, an ambitious way to ensure that student voices are being heard, and something that could pave the way for some kind of institutional change.
But as it stands right now, the student government here has no real leverage with administration. Which is fine for passing bills that get students an extra two days off of class in the fall, but not so much for getting the university to recognize its unethical monetary investments.
Le told me there have indeed been bills in the past that have advocated for more student voice on the Board of Trustees.
Those bills, however, succumbed to the three year lifespan that every ASMSU bill has. If enough interest were to be garnered for those bills today, they would need to be reintroduced as new bills, and the whole process would start from the beginning.
