As of this moment, Associated Students of Northern Michigan University, the student government of NMU, has only 11 of 24 representative seats filled. That’s only about 46 percent of your government at work.

This percentage of seats filled is the lowest it has ever been, according to records found at NMU archives. No government assembly in recorded history at NMU has been lower than 50 percent.

These empty seats are more dangerous to this campus than they appear to be. This means that certain students will be without representation on campus issues, which is a direct violation of students’ rights. Currently, certain students can have no representation at all, as in the case of students who live in Spooner and West halls.

Whether the issues range from trayless dining to not enough parking spots, or to more serious issues like state appropriation money and gender blind housing, students need a representative so their opinions can be considered.

This situation needs to be taken care of by Vice President Josh Corbat and the four-member board that fills the holes left by resigning representatives. As the head of the board, it is Corbat’s responsibility to start scheduling interviews of ASNMU hopefuls so holes can eventually be filled. The rest of the board cannot act without Corbat’s involvement. So how much longer do we have to wait?

Let’s start streamlining some of these appointments to fill a couple of seats. Timely action starting at the end of last school year and continuing at the beginning of this one, could have filled at least two spots.

Two out of 13 is not much, but at least we would have more than half of the general assembly. Two more members could have filled out committees and reduced the workload of the current members, maybe even freeing up some more time to have more interviews to fill out the board.

As of now, there is no constitutional rule that puts a time limit on how long it takes to fill a seat. This is unacceptable. We could go the whole year without having a representative for certain students. An ASNMU amendment can put a reasonable time table on appointing new high quality members.

According to available meeting minutes, no appointments have taken over one month of school time to complete and in some years, a replacement appointment was made at the same time of the resignation of an ASNMU representative.

Students that have turned in an application for ASNMU also need to go down and schedule an interview time. If some current ASNMU members won’t take initiative to schedule an appointment, that’s a sign that you probably should.

ASNMU needs to be filled by Oct. 1 so we can have two full months of a complete government for this semester. If this goal isn’t met I seriously doubt that our student body can have a functioning representation system and many students’ ideas and opinions will be lost to some empty seat.

Editor’s note: Brice Burge is a senior public relations major, a writer for The North Wind and on staff at the NMU Political Review, a student run publication that provides student perspective on political issues. He can be contacted at [email protected].