Last week, events in ASM and SSFC demonstrated a deeply-wrought problem facing this university’s student government.

When several factions within the general council and finance committee spent an evening’s efforts trying to dislodge political adversaries without any substantial cause Thursday, it illustrated the failures of these representatives to seek anything more than their petty personal agendas.

As heated as personal vendettas among ASM members may be, the underhanded deals and internal bickering of ASM and its various arms does little to fight the stigma that student government is more like a futile fight club and less like student representation.

If this council wants to be taken seriously, it needs to focus on making progress on issues that affect students rather than devoting time and energy to partisan games and internal jockeying.

We understand that in order to accomplish political goals in a political setting, aggressive lobbying and parliamentary wrangling are perfectly acceptable practices. We also welcome the spirited debate absent in recent student government administration. But we call on ASM to use the political process in a more professional and productive manner. Representatives most certainly need not agree with one another, but students should be able to expect at least some adversarial respect among the members.

It’s silly that some oversensitive representatives on the finance committee brought unqualified accusations of racial motivation against other finance committee members. And it’s just as shameful that a conservative coalition showed its proverbial hide by trying, without merit, to remove two chairpersons from their positions of influence merely because of their liberal opposition. Such attacks hardly move toward the goal of governance, and rumors that appointments were promised in exchange for removal votes are even more troubling.

While there likely aren?t too many smoke-filled cloakrooms in the halls of Memorial Union, this sort of backroom manipulation is not what representatives are elected to do. Put simply, if ASM wants to earn credibility with the students it portends to represent, it needs to set its sights on issues that affect the public interest, not personal games and private drama.