My all-time favorite warning label was on a child’s Batman costume. According to urban legend, the sticker read, “Warning: cape does not allow the user to fly.”

This would fend off parents from suing because little Tommy broke his leg while using the garage roof as a launching pad.

My initial reaction is not to think about kids who don’t realize that Batman’s powers are fictional, or to think of all the frivolous lawsuits. Instead, the first thing that pops into my head is, “Wait a minute; Batman can’t fly anyway!”

I’ve had an analogous reaction to the existence of the Government of the Student Body specialty seats. Essentially, the specialty seat issue is one of group preferences.

That is, should GSB gerrymander seats based on race, age, country of origin and disability, or should all students be treated equally?

But the first thing that pops into my head about the specialty seats is a different thought. That thought is, “Wait a minute; look at all the vacant seats on the senate!” Currently, there are 13 vacant senate seats.

For the uninitiated, the GSB has a little over 40 available senate positions, or seats. The regular seats are based on college or residence area.

For example, there are College of Engineering and Towers residence hall seats. There are also six seats for “special populations” —the specialty seats.

These seats, unlike the regular senate seats, divide students by factors they cannot change. For example, students can change majors or move, but it is quite difficult to change your ethnicity.

Those who oppose the specialty seats do so because they want everyone included in the regular seats.

The university says that it will not discriminate based on race, age,

handicap or national origin, and GSB should not discriminate based on those factors either. The regular senate seats should be open to all students.

Two years ago, there was a controversy over the specialty seats. Mark Nimmer and Casey Powers ran for these seats with the clearly stated purpose of trying to eliminate them if elected.

Last year, controversy over specialty seats came up again. I made a motion in the senate to strike the definitions of the specialty seats from the new GSB constitution.

That motion caused a quarter of the senate to get up and walk towards the door, threatening to drop the senate below quorum so the new constitution would not be passed.

This year, controversy over specialty seats may resurface. The new GSB constitution requires pre-election voting registration by a total of 2,250 students in each of two of the special populations to keep from going from six specialty seats to four.

If this isn’t done, next year there will be one specialty seat based on age rather than the current two and one based on home-country rather than two.

If there is concern over GSB specialty seats dropping from six to four next year, here is something to keep in mind. Right now, three of the six specialty seats are vacant.

Even if GSB elections were competitive and competition to serve on the senate was fierce, I would still oppose the specialty seats. This is because I believe in individualism instead of group-identity.

But specialty seats are unnecessary! For example, Yasmin Blackburn was elected to fill a specialty seat as this year’s “Ethnic Minority Senator.”

Senator Blackburn is a grad student who lives off-campus. Last year, Ms. Blackburn served as an off-campus GSB senator.

Had she run for a graduate seat or an off-campus seat this time, she would have been absolutely assured of winning a regular senate seat again. There were six fewer candidates than available senate seats in those classifications.

To say that specialty seats are needed is to ignore reality. Last spring, many candidates went unchallenged in the GSB election, and there were ten seats nobody ran for.

Student apathy is what determines who gets on the senate, not bias against members of “special populations.” The regular senate seats should be, and are, open to everyone. The notion that they are not is an idea that does not fly.

It still doesn’t fly if hysterical charges of racism are added, and the idea doesn’t even fly if the supporters of specialty seats are well-intentioned. Nothing can make that idea fly — not even Batman’s cape.

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