By: Benjamin Kepple

In a few days, we are going to be asked to give the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) even more money for what they claim are good, holy, and reasonable causes. They are asking for a $1 fee increase that would directly benefit collegiate governments that are already running budget surpluses, a $1.50 fee increase that would directly go to benefit the Black Volunteer Network (BVN) and Project Serve, and a $1 fee increase that would give MSA even more money to waste, excuse me, augment their current budget of $200,000. However, MSA's performance has been incredibly poor. Why in the name of God should we give them even more money? Why not just get rid of MSA? Yes, abolish it. There's no reason why not to. Since MSA's primary job is to give money to student groups, let's just get rid of the middleman. We can apply student fees directly to student groups.

Given that very few students on campus even care about the actions of MSA, that bloated cadaver of inefficiency that must be stopped for the safety of Americans everywhere, it is likely that students who care the most about MSA actions (MSA representatives and their close friends) will all flock to the polls and vote "YES" on the fee increases. Those who are the most annoyed with MSA actions (campus journalists and outsider MSA parties) will all flock to the polls and vote "NO" on the fee increases. Other active students will go and cast their votes, and decide the outcome. But most students could care less. There are very good reasons why 90% of this campus will not vote in the MSA elections.

The most valid reason that I can see is that almost all students see MSA --correctly, I might add-- as simply a bunch of self-serving opportunists. Out of their current $200,000 budget, only $90,000 is allocated directly to student groups. The rest is spent internally, and for the most part wasted on pet projects and lobbying, none of which helps us any. For example, the Women's Issues Commission, when it is not lobbying for the Democratic Party, does...does what? The External Relations Committee...lobbies the staff members of Congressmen at your expense. Not representatives mind you, but some petty junior deputy aide with a B.A. in Political Science. The most recent trip cost $1,200 of your money. It could have gone to fund a student group. It has now paid for a trip to Washington for four of our enlightened representatives to lobby some pimply faced staff aide who will forget about the visit six minutes after its completion. MSA has also spent $8,384 this year on printing, $9,162 on copy machines, $17,500 for MSA copies, and $6,407 spent on miscellaneous office supplies (and we all know how office supplies are treated). This Assembly obviously has its priorities in the right place, eh?

Think about this for a second. Can you honestly think of anything that MSA represntatives have done to really help you? I certainly can't. For the simple fact is that they don't care about you.

But perhaps I am being too hard on our angelic downtrodden hard-working MSA representatives. After all, God knows they do obviously important things such as attempting to institute a socialized system of health care, condemning outside groups and organisations, making fools of themselves at Regents' meetings, and vainly attempting to influence outside opinion.

Is it just me, or is a majority of the Assembly made up of lunatics? No one cares what a bunch of whiny, overpriveliged, self-serving, opportunistic, petty, irrational leftists thinks about U.S. News rankings, affirmative action, or health care. If they did, they would listen. They obviously don't. Yet the Assembly still conducts these entirely idiotic activities as if the Assembly members were Important People. Is it something in the water, or do the members of the Assembly just suffer from massive delusions of grandeur? Do Fiona Rose and Probir Mehta really think anyone is all that impressed with their pathetic attempts at lobbying or their moronic condemnations? Do the chairs of the various committees think that people are impressed that they are hypocrites and refuse to follow the same rules they enforce on other student groups? I really hope not, as outside of MSA's clique, it is reviled and despised by most members of groups on campus. When I was Publisher of the Review, I thanked major deities daily that I was not at the mercy of that Assembly for funding. It is unfortunate so many other student groups are at the mercy of those incompetent bureaucrats-in-training. Knowing myself how hard it is to get money to run an organization, I can imagine the frustration of true student leaders who have to beg for funding and then deal with SOAS, watching all the while as Funk Lord Probir and Company go off to Washington for no good reason.

Now, why anyone would run for this impotent, petty body is beyond me. But I do see two distinct types of students who run for "office".

Students who run on "established" party tickets are looking for lines to add on their resume. Such students also happen to be a) clique-y and/or b) incompetent, in a friendly Colonel Cathcart sort of way. Conversely, students who run on "outsider" party tickets are usually running for the sole reason that they are disgusted with how MSA is performing so far. These students never seem to get elected. If, on the outside chance they do get elected, they will either resign in disgust or switch to the dominant party in the Assembly "to do more for the student body."

I don't want any MSA representative to do more for the student body. Stop doing things for me. Please, just stop and go away. You're not only ineffectual and embarrassing, you actually cause harm to the University Community™ and student groups that are actually competent. In fact, I think it would work much better if we got rid of the middleman and simply had a non partisan board, of say, five students, elected once a year, to distribute funds out to student groups and provide office space. In other words, a Budget Priorities Committee (BPC) plus a clerk ot two, but without the MSA. If every student tossed in $3 a term, (a little more than what MSA gets now), we could hand out $210,000 directly to student groups, and the paperwork for funding and office space requests could probably easily be handled through the currently existing SOAS office. Non-campus group funding could be funded through annual referenda. Any overhead could be financed by a small fee, say $0.10 per term, which given 35,000 students on campus, is $7000 a year. That should be enough to pay for the phone bills, elections, office supplies (which would be stolen anyway), etc. It could be supervised by a student Treasurer, a student President, and student Vice President, the latter positions being honorary and created to fill in the Treasurer's spot if need be (say, if the Treasurer quits or dies.) For given the current state of student group funding, and given the shoddy state of MSA, a system like this or similar to it would work wonders.

"Whether you like it or not, [MSA] is the only official voice of students on campus." said MSA Treasurer Jon Winick a couple of months ago in the preface to the MSA-gratifying survey of students to see if they cared about student government. Well, I don't like it one bit. Our official voice is made up of fools, and in a situation that demanded real action, these people are the last group I would turn to for help or assistance.

When it comes right down to it, the "unofficial" student voices are much more capable at handling student problems and alerting students to the acts of injustice constantly perpretrated by the Administration. The Code protest in 1994, in which students occupied the Fleming Administration Building and forced the Administration to come up with the "new and improved" Code, was the brainchild of "unofficial" student voices. Activist groups on campus, student publications of all sizes and frequencies, and concerned students do far, far more than MSA to solve student problems.

So let's abolish MSA and replace it with a far more efficient body. It's not worth the money you pay it, and we need to get the -- our -- money out of the hands of the would-be politicos and self-important causeheads, and back to the people who will use it far more efficiently and competently: student groups on campus.

Given the incredibly bad performance of MSA, it is painfully obvious that they haven't done their jobs, and probably won't do well in future. They don't deserve to be the official voice for students on campus; not one action they have done has justified this distinction. We need to Start Over. By doing so, we can greatly strengthen the campus groups who unfortunately have to rely on MSA funding, and save ourselves the agonizing trauma of having to read and write about the actions of this dinosaur of a group.

Benjamin Kepple is Managing Editor of the Review, and wants his MSA fee refunded now. He is currently in hiding in northern Honduras.