As the year winds to a close, there is a changing of the guard across campus. Leaders of student councils and associations are all turning over their reigns to the next batch of student representatives.

The Government of the Student Body is also changing its personnel, with the new senators elected this spring assuming power — well, sort of.

As with many of the goings-on at GSB, turning over power to the new senators was a gigantic hassle, and provided hours of heated debate — standard Wednesday night, GSB-meeting fun.

At last Wednesday’s meeting, the GSB senators spent hours arguing about whether half of them should even be there. The new GSB Constitution’s bylaws call for the incoming senators to officially be seated at the inauguration.

However, the senators apparently failed to read the new constitution before they pushed for its passage last spring. They didn’t finish this year’s business at their last official meeting, so they wouldn’t let the new senators take over.

They decided to just keep the meeting going with the old senators still in power, even though they were violating the bylaws. As it turns out, they would’ve been violating the bylaws anyway, since the 1998-99 senators weren’t properly administered their oath of office at their inauguration.

After that was taken care of, GSB spent a few more hours arguing about funding various campus groups, including the Interfraternity Council, the Panhellenic Council and the Off Campus Council.

Two of these three councils, IFC and Panhellenic, were sent back to the GSB finance committee during the April 15 meeting for a recommendation of zero funding. The OCC was recommended for decreased funding. So at Wednesday’s meeting, the finance committee recommended that all three councils be zero funded.

After the finance committee makes its final recommendation, the GSB has two voting options: accept the recommendation or zero fund the groups. So, in the cases of these three councils, GSB had the choice between zero funding and zero funding.

This should be simple, right?

No, not exactly. Once again, the senators seemed to not understand the rules they set for themselves.

A vote was called on the recommendation to zero fund IFC, the senators’ only choice for the group. But for some reason, they voted against it, 10 to 15. So, since they voted against the finance committee’s recommendation, the group was still zero funded.

Confused yet? You should be. You should be confused about how some GSB senators can ignore the constitution they set for themselves in order to protect their own interests.

Unfortunately, these were not isolated incidents of self-interest beating out serving ISU.

At the April 15 meeting, it was discovered that Senator Chris Wisher was no longer an ISU student and was no longer living in Towers, his constituency. According to the GSB Constitution, senators must be students and live in the residence areas they represent to be on GSB. (No kidding.)

Since Wisher didn’t meet those standards, the GSB drafted a bill to remove Wisher from the Senate. Even Wisher told the Senate he should be removed. But for some reason, some of Wisher’s friends on GSB didn’t think the constitution really applied to him.

“I don’t give a damn what the article says,” said Steve Erickson, off campus. “I’m going to vote to keep him on.”

I don’t give a damn what the article says? I hope Erickson gives a damn about other parts of the constitution, like the one about protecting the rights of individuals on campus. Otherwise, I guess we’re out of luck since Erickson seems to think he only represents himself in the GSB.

GSB senators are elected by the students to represent us and govern us. We elect them with the understanding that they will serve us to the best of their abilities.

GSB senators are not elected to protect each of their own interests. Even if a senator happens to like the greek system or another senator enough to allow him or her to break the rules, we trust him or her to ignore personal feelings and follow the constitutional rules.

So, next year’s senators: Serve on GSB for the best interests of the students you represent, not in the best interests of yourselves. If you’re not there to represent us, spend your Wednesday nights doing something else.

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Sara Ziegler is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is the opinion editor of the Daily.