Every year, Sacramento State is infused with new attitudes and minds, but apparently Associated Students, Inc. sees these new students as just more of the same.

At last week?s ASI board meeting, it was brought to the attention of the board that not all ASI positions were advertised to the students. In response to these accusations, Interim ASI Director Pat Worley said last week that students haven?t shown much interest in serving on committees in the past, using this as an explanation for filling some of their positions in the summer. This is not acceptable.

Whether or not this is an established pattern is irrelevant. There are thousands of new students who may have been willing to fill positions if they had been aware that they existed. Perhaps no one would have been interested, but they should have been given the chance.

This campus is diverse, and the student population is growing every year. Sac State is as large as it has ever been, and now more than ever, we need an ASI that gives everybody a chance to be included.

Along with the new students, each new year brings the possibility of new issues in ASI. With different items on the agenda, new and different students will be affected, and may have their passion to be in student government ignited. We could get some new blood, instead of the same old group.

At this point, ASI appears to be a revolving door. If somebody gets turned away from one position, they can turn around and grab another one. Therefore, ASI has a lot of the same faces from year to year. Several people this year were on losing slates last year, including the two people who filled the new positions of Press Secretary and Chief of Staff.

The students already around the ASI inner circle were very aware of the new positions, but how many other students were informed? My guess is not many.

Each student pays $107 in ASI fees a year, and deserves to be informed. This money could be used to buy about 125 blue books, 78 scantrons and two used textbooks from the Hornet Bookstore, but instead it goes to ASI. We pay ASI, so everything it does should be out in the open, especially when the opening of new or vacant positions is involved. ASI should have advertised in the spring for the fall positions, when students are actually around, rather than on the ASI and University web sites over the summer, as ASI President Artemio Pimentel claims was done.

Just because there is a history of apathy among Sac State students towards ASI does not mean that ASI should give up trying to draw up new interest. I applaud Kevin Greene, chief of staff at ASI, for adamantly encouraging more student involvement, but ASI needs to show this in their actions and not mere words. If Worley is going to base decisions on the actions of past students, then ASI is not acting appropriately, nor is it serving the students? interests.

If students are not given a chance to participate in ASI at the beginning of each school year, the pattern Worley described will never be stopped. All openings in ASI should be advertised. If there is still no interest, that?s too bad, but at least all students would be given a chance.

Russ Edmondson is a journalism major. He can be reached at [email protected].