Student regent is plausible - if modified

On the third Thursday and Friday of every month, eight men and women of various political persuasions gather in the Fleming Administration Building.

Joined by a couple dozen University administrators, students, faculty members and newspaper reporters, this group sets out to make some of the most important decisions on campus. They guide the University's policy, its academic direction and in many ways, students' lives.

But do students have any real influence on the outcome of these proceedings? Nope.

The University Board of Regents are elected by citizens of the state of Michigan, yet students, arguably their most important constituents, have as much influence over them as a farmer living in Escanaba.

FILE PHOTO The University Board of Regents did not approve a Michigan Student Assembly fee increase that would have raised money to support the student regent campaign. Despite the setback, MSA continues to lobby for a voice on the board.

When they hide behind the doors of the Regents' Room in an "executive session" - which they really, really like to do - there is nothing that even a mob of angry students can do to find out what's going on inside (they've been known to use the University's underground tunnel network to escape such a scene).

It would be helpful to have a student arguing something besides dollars, cents and the bottom line at the annual tuition increase regents' meeting. It would be nice to know that a student had some sort of input into the appointment of important administrative positions.

The reason that such representation is out of reach for students is because of an all-too-literal interpretation of the Michigan Constitution. Having a student on the board would allow them to grant themselves degrees - which is viewed as a conflict of interest. But since the granting of degrees is really little more than a rubber-stamping activity by the regents and is only done at the recommendation of individual academic units, it is unlikely that an overzealous student regent would start using his or her power to grant himself or herself numerous degrees.

But because of these legalistic semantics, the only way to get a student in on the regents' discussions, the Constitution would have to be amended.

For years, the Michigan Student Assembly's Student Regent Task Force has made strides to give students greater influence over the board's activities. It has gotten so far as to have a bill on the floor of the state legislature - only to have its sponsor bail on them.

But as of late, the task force has taken a new route. Rather than continuing to press the University administration and Lansing, the task force has decided to push the student body into a hefty fee to raise the required signatures to get the amendment on the state ballot.

The "Yes! Yes! Yes!" campaign, an annoying, expensive and excessively glitzy and cutesy campaign led by now-MSA Treasurer Bram Elias, managed to garner enough student votes to approve an increase to student fees by $4.50 per semester.

In order to get the fee enacted, the regents would have had to approve it. But the board, not willing to give up their power, have been none-too-willing to approve the hike.

Even if the fee had been voted on, the battle would be far from over. The task force would use the money to hire a "headhunting" agency to go out and find 100,000-plus state citizens to put their name behind the movement. Assuming it finds enough people with a vested interest in the University's student representation, said agency will charge the task force $1 a head, quickly eating up thousands of student dollars.

In the past nine months, the task force's members have put most, if not all, of their effort behind this campaign, which is at best a rickety bridge over a fast-moving stream.

They haven't tried to build coalitions with other state universities' student governments to lobby for a Legislature-ordered referendum, nor have they spent adequate time educating the student body about the benefits a student regent would bring - after all, more than 80 percent of students stayed away from the polls in the Spring 1998 MSA election.

With the inevitable demise of the student-fee plan, it is time for the task force to reprioritize.

A student regent is an attainable goal - but only if students spends their time wisely pursuing feasible options. By focusing on the possible, MSA could produce a very tangible and meaningful product.

09-08-98