Letters to the editor

To the Daily:

I’ve seen a lot of student government platforms over the years (and crafted many), but I can honestly say that this fall’s Students 4 Michigan platform is the most offensive I’ve ever seen to student interests.

Citing its website, there are 11 points to its Michigan Student Assembly platform. Student lobbyist in Lansing, representation on the Ann Arbor City Council and student on the University Board of Regents are all calls for involvement in other organizations. So your goal is to convince them to give you representation to push … what?

Broadcasting student group announcements on TV, student group outreach and providing environments to foster dialogue between students are all basically calls for increased communication. Communicating … what? Doing what for student groups? Fostering what dialogues?

Accountability for MSA representatives and meeting transparency are extremely amorphous (as if the above ideas aren’t) and could mean anything from required handouts in every dorm room on campus to requiring representatives to wipe three times.

This leaves three actual items on the platform: “(B)ringing big name performers to campus” is the biggest sham platform idea I’ve seen, and it’s been on every platform for the last two years for every party. It’s not MSA’s role, even if it were, this kind of broad promise is nothing more than pandering. Student housing rights and education — what does that mean? You’re going to change Ann Arbor city law and Michigan contract law to affect the leases of tenants? How? Give me something specific you’re going to do, an idea, not just the listing of something you wish were vaguely “better” without some idea of how to do so. And encouraging the University to increase students of color admissions is again something MSA really doesn’t affect.

Where’s the Fall Break (2000/2001 platform idea, 2001 accomplishment of MSA)? Where’s the extended Central Campus Recreation Building hours (2001 platform idea, 2002 accomplishment)? Where’s Entr