Resignation shows lack of communication

September 17, 2007 —

As Student Association now finds itself minus a key postion in its office, several students are left to wonder how and why this came to pass. Many remain uninformed as to the details of the situation, and are left asking the some questions that remain unanswered. Why did this happen? And when will they be informed of the full story?

In the wake of the impeachment charges brought upon SA's Parliamentarian Eric Read, several questions have been brought up in and around the Vanguard office. These questions raise several issues of how well SVSU's student government keeps the population informed.

Several of those inquiries surrounded a very simple question: why?

It seemed as though not many people in proverbial loop actually knew what was going on. Speculation as to the real reasoning began to surface, with the most popular explanation having something to do with the defendent's popularity - something that, if asked, any SA representative would most assuredly tell you isn't the case.

This problem in communication is on the heads of the students as much as it is on SA. The charges were issued at last Monday's House meeting - all such meetings are open to the public - and all statements were available to anyone who requested them. So, any student interested in this issue could have simply gone to the SA office and asked for the official statement - in which Read's name was continually mispelled - written by the gentleman who brought on the charges, and read them over.

However, it was apparent that several students were interested, and even though they were not in attendance of the open meeting, there was very little information available to them in the following days to brief them on the issue as it stood.

While it is understandable this was something that came about rather quickly, leaving SA little time to prepare anything to say to the students, it did nothing in the week following to inform the inquisitive minds of their electorate.

Perhaps an official statement could have been posted throughout the school, informing students on what exactly was going on with their government.

The governing body of the students has a duty to keep them informed as the what exactly is going on in and around their office. There are plenty of advertisements for all of the wonderful programs and events SA puts on for SVSU's students, and it is only fair to them that they recieve this kind of news.

The Vanguard maintains a strong working relationship with SA, as they rely on us for the publicty of many events they put on, and we likewise thank them for continuing to speak candidly with us about situations such as this. However, this issue happened so quickly, that we at the Vanguard did not have the opportunity to update the the student body of the situation. SA should have taken the time to inform the student body of at least the bottom line of the situation.

In the goals and objectives SA issued at the start of the semester, it stated that it, as an organization, wished to become more accessible to students.

This should be the first step in forging stronger communication between itself and the rest of SVSU.