For the second time this semester, ASNMU did not hold its weekly meeting because of a lack of agenda items. While certainly no one wants to sit around in the University Center on a Monday night without anything to talk about, ASNMU’s willingness to cancel a meeting is disappointing for the student body.

ASNMU’s job is to represent all students, to provide a voice for students in the greater university. ASNMU has only held four meetings this semester –– cancelling twice because of a lack of agenda and once because of Labor Day. While Labor Day might be understandable, ASNMU has only held four meetings in seven weeks. When the governing body fails to hold a meeting even just once, it suggests that there simply aren’t enough student concerns to fill their time. That raises the question, is your student government doing enough?

There certainly have been some innovative ideas to roll through discussion in the meetings, such as making bikes available for all freshman and creating a committee to help students who have to face the All-Student Judiciary. The only thing that ASNMU has really done for current students, besides create committees for aspects of ASNMU that already exist, is work to keep the study lounge on the lower level of the LRC open 24 hours, every day but Friday and Saturday. While this certainly benefits all students who don’t have somewhere to go between 3 and 6 a.m., this was a project ASNMU President Lucia Lopez presented in her very first ASNMU meeting last semester, not something thought up in the seven weeks that school has been in session.

We believe that ASNMU needs to be doing more to help students now. Students  need to see ASNMU more effectively involved in their day-to-day for ASNMU to be an effective organization.

To accomplish this, perhaps ASNMU should do more, by sending out surveys or better reaching their constituents. We hope that all the time off was spent thinking of ways to help students.

We would never not publish a newspaper simply because there wasn’t much news.There is always something that is affecting students, and it’s ASNMU’s job to find out what it is and help to make it better. ASNMU needs to start holding themselves accountable for what students have elected them to do –– actively work on the behalf of students.