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MSA cancels meeting to support GEO

Reaffirming the Michigan Student Assembly's support for the Graduate Employees Organization, MSA President Flint Wainess cancelled the assembly's weekly meeting in the midst of a GEO walk-out.

Wainess said tonight's meeting was cancelled "in defference to GEO" and to give substance to the resolutions the assembly passed in support of the organization in the last few months.

"(MSA Vice President Sam Goodstein) and I concluded yesterday that if the assembly was going to back GEO, it shouldn't just put its toe in the water, it should dive in," Wainess said.

MSA Vice President-elect Probir Mehta said GEO encouraged the assembly to either cancel its meeting or postpone it until after the walk-out.

"We've been proponents of GEO for a long time," Mehta said. "They requested that we either cancel or move the meeting."

With only two meetings left, some representatives have mixed feelings about whether the statement of support is worth the lost time.

"I really wish they had moved it instead of cancelled it," said LSA Rep. Erin Carey. "People are understanding of why they did it but wish we had that time to work with."

MSA President-elect Fiona Rose said the action "shows that MSA puts its money where its mouth is," regardless of the misgivings of individual representatives.

Tonight's meeting was originally scheduled to be the "in-out" meeting -- the doubleheader when Wainess and Goodstein end their term and Rose and Mehta are sworn in. This procedure is traditionally followed immediately by the first meeting of the new assembly.

However, due to a "minor stipulation" in election policies, this meeting had already been postponed one week, Rose said. The last two meetings of the year will include the agenda items intended for tonight's meeting as well as those proposed by the new assembly. MSA chair elections are scheduled for the second half of next Tuesday's meeting.

"It will mean a bit of a crunch," Rose said.

Campus Governance Committee chair Sean Byrne, who handles the official rules of the assembly, said the in-out meeting's postponement is a result of a late election result certification by the Central Student Judiciary. When the election results came in last Tuesday, CSJ decided the assembly should wait two weeks from the following Tuesday for the official turnover, Byrne said.

"We didn't want to wait that long but there wasn't much we could do," Byrne said.