IUSA begins working for students again

I've been around this campus a long time, and even participated in the IU Student Association elections commission, I can tell you that never has IUSA done a more capable job than this year's group of student leaders.\nIn the past, many people involved in IUSA failed in their commitments to represent students. They often launched campaigns on ideas so vast and vague that practicality fell by the wayside. \nMost of these ideas, such as lowering tuition, "fixing" parking and instituting a better and more cost-effective meal plan were noble goals. But let's face it, only a president and a board of trustees that care about these issues will ever effect those changes.\nAnother IUSA political sin was committed every time an executive short-changed students for personal political goals. When former IUSA president Dave Orensten said that the bus plan would not dramatically increase cost while providing students with exceptional service, students knew they were being taken to the cleaners yet again by fee-mongering bureaucrats. Orensten just wanted a second term. \nToo many former IUSA members cared too much for their rank and privilege than their practical accomplishments for the student body.\nFinally, I point out the many years of sitting student congresses that have rarely criticized a University administration so corrupt and fraudulent as to border on the criminal. \n Yes friends, I'm talking about fund mismanagement, illegal hiring and firing practices, suspect promotions, gross insubordination of Indiana statutes requiring free access to information, and so on. \nIsn't it amazing that such a "liberal" institution such as IU consistently abridges First Amendment freedoms? And where was our student congress? They were playing games of euchre while vaguely paying attention to the droning of incorrectly used parliamentary procedure.\nThey should have been clogging administrators e-mail boxes with messages. They should have been protesting outside Franklin Hall every time a new fee went into effect. Instead, they passed resolutions with little authority.\nBut this year's IUSA leadership is different. Why? It's so simple as to state the obvious. IUSA currently concerns itself with the practical: providing free, well-managed advertising to student groups, reviving ATMs on campus, holding public discussion sessions with key administrators, cutting its own budget such as the never used Faculty Course Evaluations office and by actually berating administrators. True, I'd like to see more old-fashioned sit-ins with that wonderfully sarcastic humor only students in college seem to master. But I suppose IUSA is off to a good start.\nSo, what to do next to keep IUSA rolling in the right direction? Keep up the attitude that one small practical change is worth a volume of "big" ideas. Continue to whisper to IU President Myles Brand that he should be replaced; maybe he'll lose hope and quit. \nRatchet up the rhetoric against bureaucratic malaise. Fight bad policy with conviction and the knowledge that your term is over in a year, what are they going to do to you? Remember that your thinly veiled respect for the administration is politically stupid and directly violates your duty to the student body. Be jerks when you need to be! It's not like they respect you. \nMost importantly, find successors that love IU as much as you do, and who will continue to build on your successes. Thanks, IUSA!