Michigan Student Assembly President Abhishek Mahanti said the assembly’s current practice of nominating and appointing representatives to the Department of Public Safety Oversight Committee will soon be dropped.

The move comes a little more than a week after independent lawyers quoted in a Michigan Daily article called into question the legality of the nomination process.

Mahanti said the assembly will create a resolution in the coming weeks to revise the MSA Compiled Code, which will add an election each semester for student representatives to the Oversight Committee.

“We, as an executive board, realize our mistake in not taking a closer look at this Oversight Committee issue,” Mahanti wrote in an e-mail interview. “We've been proactive in using this opportunity to learn from our mistake in regards to our relationship with General Counsel and to re-prioritize and strengthen our Campus Safety Commission.”

Officials from MSA have come under fire lately on two fronts with regard to the DPS Oversight Committee — a body that was formed in 1992 to meet state law and act as a check on DPS, which was established that same year.

First, an article published in the Nov. 16 edition of the Daily outlined MSA’s election process for student representatives to the committee — a process that independent lawyers said may violate state law.

Then it came to light that MSA officials had refused to meet with a University professor who was concerned about the legality of election processes used to select students, faculty and staff to serve on the committee. MSA officials defended themselves by saying they opted not to meet with Prof. Douglas Smith after consulting with the University’s Office of General Counsel, which advised not to talk to him.

After learning about the situation at a Nov. 17 MSA meeting, MSA Public Health Rep. Hamdan Yousuf cautioned MSA’s executive board from “becoming just an arm of the administration,” according to a Nov. 18 Daily article.

The main concerns about the DPS Oversight Committee involve the election processes used to select representatives to serve on the body, which is comprised of two faculty, two staff and two student representatives. Those representatives then make recommendations regarding grievances filed against the campus police.

But widespread negligence of internal bylaws and state laws today has recently raised concerns over how effectively the body can handle that responsibility.

Though a Michigan statute states that student representatives to the DPS Oversight Committee must be “nominated and elected” by the student body, MSA has, in recent years, appointed student representatives to fill the positions without a student-wide election.

In an MSA meeting Nov. 3, the assembly voted to approve two new student representatives to the committee: LSA junior Hemant Chaparala and Engineering sophomore Prithvi Murthy.

In a special report earlier this month, the Daily quoted several lawyers who said that nomination process appears to violate Michigan’s Public Act 120 of 1990, which states, “The committee shall be comprised of individuals nominated and elected by the faculty, students, and staff of the institution.”

While a nomination process is used today, interviews with former MSA officials from the last two decades reveal that MSA used to put DPS Oversight Committee candidates on ballots in student body-wide MSA elections.

According to the DPS Oversight Committee’s bylaws, students, faculty and staff members all have the right to vote for their own representative. But sometime in 2000, that right was waived for students when MSA began appointing representatives to the committee — dropping the student-wide election process.

University alum Brian Kight served as an MSA representative from 1990 to 1994.