Power struggle, lagging attendance freezes student Senate

:Well it’s time for another school year to start at PSU. I’ve personally always liked fall term most of all. It’s a time of beginnings. Even though it’s a season that for many other things signals the end of a yearly cycle, for school it’s exactly the opposite.

That is of course unless you’re looking at our elected members and representatives for ASPSU. Not that ASPSU more closely resembles the declining cycle of life more than the freshness of rebirth with a new school year. You just can’t say something is dead unless it’s been alive first, ya know? And one meeting, one, held nearly four months ago just doesn’t cut it.

Now how could this happen? What the hell?

The upcoming year needs to be planned for; business needs to be taken care of. But no, it’s not going to happen. Why? Because within the ASPSU there are two groups of people, and a power struggle for who gets to call the shots.

What’s going on is these two groups, let’s call them group A and group B, see things differently in the world. Now this is usually a good thing, one group serves to keep the other in check and through compromise the two groups usually work out what’s best for the student body.

It’s kind of like our government, democrats and republicans, checks and balances, that sort of thing. But not this time.

Things are so balanced that when group B tries to put forth new candidates for the remaining openings for senators group A turns them all down because group A opposes group B. Group B says, “Fine. Then we won’t go to the meetings.” (Which they had already not been doing.) Group A says, “Fine, then we’ll ignore the whole concept of what government is and just try to run it arbitrarily with only half the senate declaring ‘but we have quorum, we have quorum.'”

(According to the Attorney General 50 percent plus one is quorum, or more simply put, 13 out of 25. So how exactly is 10 out of 25 quorum?)

The point is both groups have it all wrong and they in their infighting and power games are screwing us over.

Now I know for a fact there will be those who will read this and get upset with one of those “well, you don’t know, you weren’t there,” responses. To which I say, “Hey, I don’t have to be. I’m not the one that ran for this office. I’m not the one that put myself in a position to be above my own personal bias and agenda and serve my fellow students, you did. So when is it you actually start doing your job?”

Even if all of my facts were completely wrong, which they’re not, the truth of it is our ASPSU Senate can’t even get their feet off the ground and that does not bode well for the upcoming school year.

As students, that leaves us high and dry with no hope of progress anywhere in sight.

With classes starting in less than two weeks when will these two groups be able to get together and iron out these problems? Are they actually going to get together? Will they be able to put the past behind them enough to do so? How are they going to make up for the time that has already been wasted?

Are you pissed off yet?

If so, get involved. Contact the ASPSU offices and let them know of your dissatisfaction. Run for one of the remaining senate seats. Remind them they took these positions (supposedly) for the benefit of the students, not themselves, on the promise they would represent us, the students, and what is best for the student body.

If that doesn’t work, well, let’s just say it will leave me with plenty of fodder for the next eight months.