Last year, we published our first-ever guide to Michigan State’s student elections. Since we had a 100% success rate on our endorsements last year, we figured we should apply our powers on a broader scale this time around. With the entire ASMSU General Assembly, two student taxes and more on the ballot this year, we wanted to cover as much as we could. Although the UACOR tax vote and RHA constitutional amendments are a bit beyond the scope of what we were able to cover given our limited turnaround time, we’d like to keep people informed about as much as we can before voting starts on March 29. Without further ado, here are our stances on this year’s biggest ballot items:
Continue reading The Evening Look Guide to the Spring 2021 Student ElectionsTag: asmsu
Pay The Reps
Sometimes, it feels like no one cares about ASMSU. Turnout for General Assembly elections has been in the single digits every year that student tax hikes aren’t on the ballot, meaning that many students don’t know who represents them. There have been many contests in recent years where the number of candidates has been at or below the number of seats needed to be filled, resulting in uncompetitive races.
But there is one man who cares a lot about ASMSU — Sergei Kelley. The big boss is back with a new article for The Morning Watch about a proposal to boost engagement and fill General Assembly seats. Currently, only the President, Directors, and hired staff of ASMSU are paid, while representatives are unpaid volunteers. A report presented by Representatives Aaron Iturralde, Jordan Kovach, and Travis Boling aims to change that by proposing a $250/semester stipend for representatives who show up to most meetings, do constituent outreach, and generally are active participants in student government.
Naturally, Kelley is not interested, portraying it as the big, bad student government giving itself money to spread leftism on campus. To that end, he tries his hardest to give the proposal the worst framing he can. Apparently, all the fat cats at ASMSU spend money on are yearly banquets, retreats, and diversity training. And now, another transfer from the student government elite to themselves? The horror!
The report addresses several important reasons why people might not be interested in participating in student government at the GA level. Representatives have to make a pretty big time commitment to make assembly meetings, committee meetings, have office hours, write and review legislation, and do other tasks related to their position. That’s all fine for someone who doesn’t need to work in college, but 20% of MSU students come from the bottom 60% of family incomes. If someone interested in student government had to choose between a paycheck or doing legislative work for free, I bet they would choose the paycheck every time. I don’t think it’s presumptuous to say that affects who decides to run for GA positions.
It’s impossible to get everyone interested in student government, but there are only 36 seats in the GA from 15 colleges. 13 of those seats are vacant, including all the seats reserved for the College of Nursing, Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, and the College of Music. No Preference, the College of Education, and the College of Arts and Letters all only have one seat filled. There are two inactive slots in CORES and COPS, plus four more in the Major Governing Groups, according to ASMSU’s website. While some of this may be due to the weirdness of scheduling and promoting the previous ASMSU election during a pandemic, it’s ridiculous that there are so many vacancies in student government.
Even conservative representatives understand that this is a good proposal for student government. Though Kelley states that he spoke to multiple representatives, the only one who would give him a quote for this article was Jack Harrison, a Communication Arts and Sciences representative who is also on the MSU College Republicans eboard. Although Kelley has been known to talk to conservative students while passing them off as random voices from the student body, it backfires as Harrison tells him that it is a good policy, because “it is important to reward representatives for their work” and mentions the struggle to fill the GA seats.
Despite Kelley’s implicit protest in the title of his article, which contains an outdated photo that implies representatives have already approved the proposal, I think the proposed bill is a fantastic idea to make sure that representatives are actually paid (somewhat) for what they do. If we want to have a student government that accurately represents students’ concerns and speaks to their issues, then we should start with having a full government.
-K. Sins
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UPDATE: Two More Spring 2020 ASMSU Endorsements
Due to mysterious IT issues, voting in the ASMSU elections was delayed until this morning, March 31, and extended to April 6. Our guess is that Russian bots finally realized how important this election is to the balance of power in this country. No doubt that many of you read our election guide yesterday and were confused why you couldn’t vote. Well, we were too.
The good news is that during the delay, two more fantastic candidates saw our article and contacted us. We’re proud to include Aaron Iturralde (Education) and Jordan Kovach (James Madison) in our first-ever group of endorsements.
Iturralde is running on a broad platform that includes making himself available to his constituents through phone and email, holding office hours, advocating to make fifth-year internships in the College of Education more affordable, increasing teacher wages, greater transparency, increased diversity in the College of Education, and much more.
Kovach’s platform includes greater accountability for racial bias incidents on campus, advocating for MSU to divest from fossil fuels, putting feminine hygiene products in all campus bathrooms, increasing sustainability in dining halls, and greater support for immigrant students, regardless of documentation. She has also served as the secretary for the ASMSU Freshman Class Council this year.
We hope to see both of these students in the General Assembly next year, and we hope that those of you reading this vote.
-The Evening Look Staff
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The Evening Look Guide to the Spring 2020 ASMSU Elections
It’s that time of year again, folks — the flowers are in bloom, short sleeves are acceptable outside clothing, and the 5% of students who pay attention to this stuff choose who ascends to the hallowed halls of the Associated Students of Michigan State University, our student government. Those committed 5% (which hopefully includes you, reader) vote for their college’s representative in the ASMSU General Assembly from today, March 30, to April 5.
Last year, our publication was most concerned with the antics of Agriculture and Natural Resources representative Sergei Kelley, editor-in-chief of The Morning Watch, and the General Assembly’s attempt to boot him from the body. After Kelley’s defeat at the hands of his fellow students last spring, we turn our attention to the body as a whole.
Continue reading The Evening Look Guide to the Spring 2020 ASMSU Elections
Saving Sergei Kelley
On Valentine’s Day ninety years ago, love filled the windy Chicago air as Al Capone and a number of his compadres allegedly gunned down seven members of a rival gang. History, as it is wont to do, attempted to repeat itself last night at the bi-weekly meeting of the General Assembly of the Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU). There the day’s aura of human connection was shattered by the brutal reality of politics. A bill calling for the removal of College of Agriculture and Natural Resources representative and The Morning Watch Executive Editor Sergei Kelley was proposed and a vote to have said bill bypass the usual committee procedures quickly succeeded. The next couple of hours were equally tense and boring, as the organization slowly waded through its bureaucratic and procedural necessities while representative Kelley sat patiently waiting for the debate and vote that would determine his fate. When the debate reared its head, it did so with extreme passion, as copious amounts of frustration and anger bubbled to surface of this oft placid environment. By the end of the discussion, however, the outcome was clear: Sergei Kelley would live to see another day as a representative of ASMSU. And so he did, as a number of other representatives stormed out of the assembly in various states of sorrow and bewilderment. This is the story of how Kelley found himself on the brink of disaster, and why he still woke up today as a member of ASMSU.
Continue reading Saving Sergei Kelley
The Evening Look 