While those and other student organizations are among the campus’s finest treasures, the extent to which their memberships and our student government overlap should certainly see greater public scrutiny. The same is true for The Exponent’s staff.

By my count, four of the 21 ASMSU senators are affiliated with NECO, the campus environmental group and four have been involved with EWB, which conducts water development work in rural western Kenya. In addition, five have spent time on The Exponent’s payroll.

Similarly, looking at the paper’s 50 staff members, around 10--myself included--have been involved in EWB and at least two have been active in NECO. While the informal nature of involvement in student organizations makes those exact numbers debatable, they certainly indicate a trend.

In part, the story here is the success of the two student groups, which have become bastions of leadership by both attracting students likely to pursue additional leadership roles and developing their members’ abilities through their respective work. In my role managing The Exponent, for example, I use skills learned facilitating community development efforts in Kenya on a daily basis. Many of MSU’s student leaders can tell similar stories--something that’s one of our campus’s most important assets.

However, that situation does raise questions that deserve public hearing: Are sustainability initiatives like the $10,000 invested in dumpsters for the campus recycling program last October over-emphasized by student government because of its green voting bloc? Or is NECO instead an example of student government working the way it should, providing a group of passionate students with the means to make a difference?

Furthermore, does The Exponent over-report on EWB because of my involvement? Is the overlap between our staff and the Senate something that compromises our journalistic obligation to hold student government to task for its actions? And, perhaps most importantly, is the number of cross-involved students on campus something that risks making our leadership culture into an exclusive elite?

Those questions cannot answered by anything other than ongoing dialogue, both within our student government and newspaper staff and externally within the public to which we are ultimately accountable. When an opportunity to report on an EWB event comes up, for example, I make a point of explaining my biases and delegating the decision about whether to run coverage to another staff member.

Particularly given its role allocating student funds, ASMSU must make sure to take similar measures, both fully disclosing its officials’ interests and making time for the periodic soul-searching that underlies ethical leadership. It must also take pains to reach out beyond MSU’s network of cross-involved student leaders. As vibrant as that network is, we must remember that it represents only part of the student body.

Corrrection:

A sidebar accompanying the Jan. 20 Editorial labeled “Highlights from ASMSU’s Constitution” should have been labeled “Highlights from ASMSU’s Constitution and Bylaws.”