Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on the Government of the Student Body.

The Government of the Student Body should work for county and city government.

If it is agreed that local government is up to no good, and that GSB is ineffective at best, we could kill two birds with one stone by joining them together. Call it a productive form of sabotage – torpedo local government shenanigans by assigning them a workforce unable to get anything done. With GSB at the helm, local government would pull a Titanic and finally leave us alone.

The need for this duet can be seen in last Thursday’s passage of the keg ordinance. If we ever had a chance of stopping it, that hope was buried by GSB’s involvement. The problem isn’t that GSB supported the ordinance – that isn’t the case – it’s that GSB opposed it so badly they actually helped pass it.

Imagine reading the following newspaper headline: “GSB senate endorsed the ordinance in October.” Would you be surprised to learn it was actually printed? The Dec. 9 edition of the Ames Tribune had this exact headline on page B7, in continuation of the front-page article “Supervisors to hear keg ordinance again.” Near the end of the article, the author included a qualifier stating the endorsement hinged on certain conditions – but that was “fine print” many readers would have missed.

Many just browse headlines and skim bits and pieces. For those who don’t, headlines still have more influence. As a result, many readers would have considered the ordinance a done deal, paving the way for passage.

To understand how the Tribune could believe the “GSB senate endorsed the ordinance in October,” take a look at the text of the bill GSB passed. The very first resolution “encourages” a study to examine effects of the ordinance. The second “supports” a sunset clause. The third, which would make John Wayne shake in his boots, “requests” a report on related keg registration laws.

What these phrases have in common is that they are toothless. Imagine approaching your boss for a raise in this manner. To convince him or her, you would have to show you are an asset and that a raise would be mutually beneficial in securing a valuable employee.

By contrast, the GSB bill is akin to an employee waltzing into the boss’s office and saying, “I wouldn’t mind a raise, can I have one?” Power doesn’t work that way – it gives only when it must. After glazing over the “supports” and the “requests,” readers would have come to the only part of the bill that stood out: GSB “fully endorses a Keg Ordinance” that satisfies the aforementioned platitudes.

The headline practically wrote itself.

This would be petty griping if GSB weren’t such a well-funded organization. Who cares if GSB can’t get it right? The problem is that it has almost a $1.5 million budget – and guess where that money comes from? Students own GSB and its $1.5 million budget, and we should expect a serious return for that kind of money.

Another problem is that outside of the university, some people take GSB seriously. If student government approves of something local government wants to do, hey, that’s a big deal. The GSB stamp of approval gives a green light for the city or county to railroad over student interests.

The Ames Tribune was incompetent for its part, but that doesn’t let GSB off the hook.

Without student government, individual students took the initiative to write letters to the editor, participate in student discussions and to make very intelligent, reasoned arguments at the keg forums.

It is uncertain if we could have stopped the keg ordinance, but there can be no doubt that GSB helped pass it into law.

– Nicolai Brown is a senior in linguistics from Okoboji.