Last year’s contentious Michigan Student Assembly election ended with Students 4 Michigan winning the vast majority of MSA seats. Its presidential candidate, Nicole Stallings, was also elected.
Candidates from S4M promised to improve student housing and campus safety, to increase funding for student groups and to strengthen the assembly’s connection with students.
A review of MSA’s activities over the last year, though, shows a mixed record of meeting those promises.
With this year’s election only weeks away, candidates from the Michigan Action Party, which consists of many former S4M members, appear poised for another decisive victory. Presidential candidate Zach Yost will take on Defend Affirmative Action Party candidate Maricruz Lopez.
When asked what MSA’s most significant contribution to the University had been this year, MSA Rep. Kenneth Baker, who ran as an independent last year, paused.
“This year was civil, quiet, there were no huge blow-ups,” Baker said. “But we didn’t give the students anything to care about. We didn’t do anything wrong, but we didn’t do anything spectacular either.”
Campus crime
In an interview with The Michigan Daily in September, Stallings said she planned to work closely with the Department of Public Safety to make students safer.
One idea was to start a program where student volunteers would walk fellow students home at night. Although DPS spokeswoman Diane Brown said in September that the department was aware of the idea, the program has not yet been implemented.
Yost said MSA has also been working with the Ann Arbor City Council in the last year to improve street lighting in student neighborhoods, a project that began several years ago. According to Yost, the project is in its final stages. It will cost less than $20,000 and include the installation of more streetlights in student neighborhoods.
Housing
The previous MSA administration was instrumental in pressuring the City Council to an ordinance pushing back the date when landlords are permitted to show properties to prospective tenants until three months after a lease begins.
That ordinance, though, contained a loophole that rendered it nearly ineffective by allowing landlords to show properties before the deadline if the current tenants signed a waiver saying they aren’t going to renew their lease.
Yost said MSA trying to get city council to close the loophole in the ordinance.
Campus food
Students running for election to MSA have promised an expansion of the Entr