Don’t tell Student Senate, but somebody failed to do their homework. The resolutions presented before Senate last week shrink into oblivion when compared with the facts. It is hard to make a point when your appeal is not based in logic.

The Chart recommends that Senators acquaint themselves with the status quo before they rush around demanding change.

Some of the puzzle pieces in their current resolutions are missing. It does not take forever to track down this information, but it does take effort. This year’s Senate appears to be long on vision, but effort is where they come up short. A little research never hurt anybody. Complaining is fun, but to make change there must be a plan. Apparently the plan for Student Senate is to talk.

Apparently nothing is too small to escape the close attention of our vigilant Senators. The price of coffee did take a walloping jump recently, but there are other committees to resolve foods ervice issues. For a group trying to prove its role as policy setters this trivializes its importance.

Senate would like to see more student-friendly programming on campus stations. Fine and good – who is going to produce it? Pay for it? Discuss it with the people in charge of programming? Action is key here, but we hope our Senators realize the constraints involved in broadcast media. There are rules to the game and one of them lists 87.7 KXMS, Fine Arts Radio International as a classical station.

Luckily for commuting students, parking spaces for hybrid cars – the preferred form of transportation on environmentally friendly campuses everywhere – will not appear at Southern. Even if a prime parking space were the carrot it would hardly entice most students to race to the dealership and take out a loan for a new vehicle. If there are students at Southern who can afford to drive a new hybrid, they can also afford parking tickets.

Also under the flag of environmental courtesy, Senators have requested a return to the newsprint course catalogs of last year.

Senate says Student Activities needs another Web link and calendar. Student Activities has a Web link with a calendar.

According to Senate, the vast majority of students and “facility” [sic] are up in arms that student funds are used for the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition event held here. As previously noted by The Chart, MSIPC is not funded by the University. It has its own donors, fundraisers and board. Student funds are not involved.

The Chart concedes that Senate may have a point in asking to cancel classes on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Virtually everyone else does. However, on a commuter campus students are not too likely to attend events even if they are excused from classes. And diversity events at Southern tend to be staggered and not scheduled all on one day.

While the coverage offered by The Chart may not be what Senate wants, we offer an open invitation for letters to the editor to let its voice be heard. So far that voice has been silent.

We believe that background knowledge, although it takes a little bit of time and that uncommon feature of common sense, could help the Senate make a difference. But inattention to detail could cripple its efforts.

Student Senate is well on its way to being just as ineffective and mired in bureaucracy as any other form of government.