Letter to the Editor: Eberhart and Ringhand object to decision

MSU Students,

On Tuesday April 18, 2017 there was a crucial “public” forum hearing on the constitutional crisis which has transpired over the last couple of weeks of the spring semester. Corruption, lack of coherence, and cover ups. This has been the theme of the response on both the administration front and the MSSA front. This theme continued well into the “public” forum that occurred this past Tuesday.

I put the word public in quotations because it did not seem like the public entirely knew that there was such a hearing taking place. The only notice that was given out for the student body was one line in The Reporter. Only three students showed up to address their concerns with the hearing officials. If more than just a handful of students were to show up, the concerns of us as the students of this school would have carried more weight rather then just being shrugged off by people who will face no repercussions for any of the violations that have occurred this election. Sad!

There was a fairly unfriendly atmosphere in the room where we did not know that we could give our input and address our issues until we had to ask at the very end of the meeting when the board was about to cast its votes. This put us at a heavy disadvantage since the weight of our argument could not fully settle before they voted on such an important issue. The meeting was even started before the so called chairmen showed up and continued on for about fifteen minutes until he arrived. Very unprofessional!

It appeared that the hearing’s main objective was not to fix the root of the problem of the MSSA scandal, but rather to either sweep it under the rug or to just attempt to appease the portion of the student body that is extremely upset by the incompetence of this administration and the MSSA as a whole. This is more than apparent when the main goal of the hearing was to figure out how to break the fewest amount of rules. A new low!

The solution we proposed was to push the election to the fall to give everyone a fair shot with a true restart. This would get new students with fresh ideas involved and change the lazy culture in the Senate where there is a bunch of talk and no action. This culture change and ownership of responsibility is crucial to our growth as a campus. Shutting students out of an election is just the icing on the cake to the deep list of issues that plague our campus. We have to hold them to the truth!

-Derek Ringhand and Aaron Eberhart