The Catt Hall Review Committee presented their 250-page report at a recent GSB Senate meeting. Included in this report was a summary statement from committee chairman Dan Pasker.

In his statement, which was also published as a letter to the editor in the Daily, Dan concluded, “The Catt Hall controversy is evidence of the suffocating atmosphere on this campus due to poor leadership by the administration.” He also writes, “the controversy has even tarnished the legacy of Catt herself.”

However, it is difficult to understand how those supportive of the most vocal and well-publicized ISU protest group in recent years can claim a “suffocating atmosphere.” If someone tried to suffocate The September 29th Movement back in the days of Allen, Meron and Milt, they sure did a bad job.

It is also difficult to understand how Catt’s legacy will be tarnished. Her primary legacy is women having the right to vote, and that legacy is unaffected by Catt’s detractors.

While the committee reached no important conclusion on the main issue it was investigating, there is a lesson that can be learned from its efforts.

But this lesson is not that Jischke is a monster or that Catt no longer has a respected legacy. Instead, the lesson is that GSB failed to represent the interests of students on this issue.

The story of the Catt Hall Review Committee began last year as an effort by three GSB senators to examine diversity issues. Matt Ostanik, Kate Kjergaard and Brian Burkhardt sent out a mass e-mail opinion survey, and slightly over 300 students responded.

Of those responding, only 5 percent (or about 15 people) selected Catt Hall as an issue that needed more attention on campus. And 8 percent of students said their position on the issue was that they wished the name of Catt Hall would change.

However, 47 percent of students checked a box saying they thought “closure” was needed on the issue. While “closure” is a vague term and could simply mean students were sick of the issue of renaming Catt Hall getting so much attention, the originators of the survey interpreted it differently.

They interpreted “closure” to mean that students wanted a special committee set up and funded by GSB to talk about the issue some more. A strange interpretation given that only 5 percent of students on the same survey said they wanted more attention given to Catt Hall!

The committee met for months, and I’m told it ended up spending about $1,300. The report was completed many weeks late and reached no conclusion about whether the name of Catt Hall should be changed.

The committee chairman, Dan Pasker, rhetorically asked in his summary statement, “Was this a complete and utter waste of time?” He answered the question “no.”

My response is that I don’t really care how people on this committee spent their time, but I do care how they spent mandatory student fee money.

To spend it on the Catt Hall Review Committee was a mistake. It would have been one thing if the originators of the Catt Hall Review Committee stood on some principle and said they were in favor of changing the name themselves. That might at least be a more respectable reason for student leaders to act against the opinion of most Iowa State students.

But to twist the response to an e-mail survey and say that a large percentage of ISU students were the ones asking for this committee to be formed is a cowardly tactic to avoid being held accountable.

While supporters of The September 29th Movement never tire of claiming that President Jischke is not listening to students, it is Jischke who is best representing student opinion on the Catt Hall issue.

Jischke stands with the vast majority of ISU students who do not advocate changing the name of Catt Hall. He has been clear in his position of keeping the name and has not desperately avoided possible criticism by staying “above the debate.”

We should ask the same of our student government.

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Benjamin Studenski is a senior in industrial engineering from Hastings, Minn.