SGA questions Collegian's independency [Re: UMass, Rene Gonzalez]

The Public Policy and Relations Committee of the Student Government Association passed a motion last night to be brought to the Senate floor Wednesday asking that The Massachusetts Daily Collegian "refund the direct financial contributions from the SGA," or the SGA will limit "access to any further resources of the SGA."

The motion, which passed after a tie-breaking vote by Adrienne Girad, chair of the committee, defines the "direct financial contributions" as $10,000 paid by the SGA for a past Collegian lawsuit, $2,592 for the services of a Center for Student Businesses advisor this year, and administrative overhead for fiscal year 2005.

The motion sited its reasons as The Collegian's decision to run "an extremely offensive, hurtful and inappropriate article on Wednesday, April 28," referring to the column by Rene Gonzalez, titled "Pat Tillman is not a hero: He got what was coming to him" and The Collegian's opposition to any SGA oversight.

more at: http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/05/04/409731dfd45e5

i don't know who popuLates the SGA now, but in my time there, the onLy peopLe who usuaLLy ran for government were members of the young repubLican cLub.

But a ticket of progressives won the SGA President and Student Trustee positions. They won the first elections, which were promptly thrown out on a technicality by the existing SGA. The re-elections were last week, and the same two won with more than 70% of the vote. They'll take office anytime now, unless the current president has more tricks in store.

There's probably more about this somewhere at the Collegian site.

when i was there, there was a 'controversy' during the eLection (spring of 97 i beLieve.. but maybe faLL of 96). the eLection was heLd and some guy won the presidency. apparentLy, not enough peopLe voted so the eLection was nuLLified and another eLection took pLace. micheLLe wong won the presidency in the 2nd eLection. i was happy since this was right after the "goodeLL takeover" - if you don't know of this Look it up - and i thought it great to have a woman and a minority in there. she proceeded to annoy the piss outta me for the next year.