His term might be over and finals week may start Monday, but it’s not too late. 2007-08 Government of the Student Body President Brian Phillips owes the ISU student body an apology.

Back in February, while students were still voting online over the proposed recreation renovations, Phillips and GSB members decided it would be appropriate to let Director of Recreation Services Mike Harvey have access to the votes while they came in to monitor that they were being recorded correctly.

It wasn’t appropriate. Never mind that it doesn’t at all seem like a logical job for Harvey to be doing (shouldn’t that be ITS’ area of expertise?), his and his staff’s awareness of the numbers was ethically deplorable. And it wasn’t Phillips’ duty to give Harvey that OK – if Phillips wanted to be a true representative to the interests of the student body, he would have wanted an untampered picture of students’ feelings. Of course, this was a move from a government that thought it would be a good idea to adopt a resolution in support of the renovations before its constituents had their say.

If Phillips or GSB had wanted a true barometer of how the student body felt about the renovations, this “referendum” would have taken its natural course. However, with the university funneling money to a student group that never bothered to register itself and knowing that university officials had vote tallies before voting had finished, no one will ever be able to say for sure if an unfettered vote took place.

And that’s why Phillips owes the student body an apology. If we can’t believe in the integrity of this “symbolic” vote, we have to question the integrity of the rest of this project. As someone who received a full-ride scholarship – tuition, room and board – for his role as president, he needs to be accountable to the student body, not the administration. In this instance, he failed miserably.