After nearly a calendar year's worth of work drafting a new constitution designed to improve ASM's viability and effectiveness, 12 listening sessions designed to incorporate student concerns and numerous drafts, the constitution fell in the span of two election days.
Perhaps the biggest slap in the face? More students came out en masse to shoot down the proposed constitution than have usually shown up to vote in ASM elections in the past. Students only seem to up their interest in ASM when it comes to crippling ASM's attempts at acknowledging its shortcomings and trying to rectify them.
The Vote No campaign created the tagline ""Take ASM Back!"" But to where? Back to what it was? If the Vote No campaign thinks keeping ASM the same was a more viable option than giving the student government a chance to try another system, they were horrifically wrong. ASM will remain muddled in a vicious cycle of inactivity and failed grassroots initiatives, essentially confined to its previous mediocrity.
According to Jeff Wright, chair of the ASM Constitutional Committee, another undertaking like this is impossible. We hope and pray that Wright is, in fact, wrong, but it may take an inhuman effort to convince the student groups receiving funding to ever support restructuring ASM. Such a hope also shrunk considerably with the death of ASM's ill-fated new constitution.
When we met with the incoming ASM members last April, they highlighted their plans for a press office meant to make ASM a viable campuswide entity once again. In addition, ASM could branch out to campus papers, further proliferating its attempts to right the proverbial sinking ship that has been the organization.
However, the press office has been virtually nonexistent in establishing ASM in the minds of students. The ASM constitution vote reflected that sentiment in spades.
If ASM hopes to ever succeed in its hopes to restructure, it must spend as much time improving the public relations department as it did tweaking and fine-tuning the proposed constitution. In addition, ASM must quell the fears of student groups, which were misinformed that their funding was in serious danger under a restructured government.
Sadly enough, the power of absurd falsehoods, inaccurate misconceptions and fearmongering perpetuated by the Vote No campaign beat out the intensive efforts of an ASM coalition determined to right their wrongs.
