You, the students, spoke last night. You might not know that. It was kind of like talking in your sleep. Everybody hears you, but you don’t know that you said it. Well, that is what happened.

As you might have gathered from the front page of this issue, there will be a new student union here at Saint Louis University, and Provost Kathy Humphrey says that those of you who are freshman will see the results. This is the good.

A union is quite needed. The Busch Memorial Center is an obsolete, featureless and rather useless building. Any prospective student would not necessarily be turned off to SLU by it, but would be, by no means, attracted to the school by it. It comes down to the fact that every major university has a student union, and if we don’t, then we really look bad.

The plan to bring a union to SLU has been in the creation process for more than 10 years.

Jay Perry was elected on the platform plank that he would make the union a priority for the University. There was a rally in the quad last year for SLUnion. The most successful student survey ever was conducted, showing a desire and need for a union. In all, a small forest was killed for this moment.

But beyond that, the benefits it will bring to students will be incredible. It will provide us with a venue large enough to hold a big-name comedian or concert. It will be visually appealing, a building that draws students to it, that makes them want to spend time there.

It will have a pub and pool tables, a game room and a food court, as well as storage areas for all student organizations. All in all, it will make on-campus life much more appealing, and commuting to campus almost like having a second home. Again, all of this is cool.

Now for the bad. This will cost money. If anyone thought that having a student union was going to cost the students some money, they had to be mentally insane, or under the impression that mommy and daddy really will pay for everything, forever. The cost? Fifty dollars a semester for full-time students. The students will NOT pay for everything. Some of the bill will be picked up by private donors. But if we want this to be a student union, the students must be expected to pay for part.

Now, back to the good for a second. We aren’t just paying for a union. It is an investment.

There were two ways the administration could have gone about building this place of presumed fun and beauty. It could have announced that construction was to begin, all of the students would have been pumped, and then three years later jacked tuition through the roof. Or they could have used shared governance.

They chose the latter. On Monday, Provost Johnson met with the current SGA Executive Board, headed by Jay Perry along with next year’s elected SGA Executive Board led by Mike Cappel, and asked them for the student body’s approval to charge the 50 clams to build something that said body had been asking for.

In return for this endorsement, SGA would be able to place students in at least half of the seats on the planning committee. This gives the students the power to dictate what goes into their union, and how it goes into their union.

The SGA Senate also has the power to end the fee at any time, and to control how much they want to pay, by dictating how much the administration must raise. So, in conclusion, we are paying to play the leading role in creating our union. Sounds good, huh? OK, now the ugly.

Many of you might not remember being asked if this sounded good to you. There is a good reason for this.

Please note, above, that the administration informed SGA leaders of the $50 charge Monday.

SGA voted on the bill last night, meaning there were little over 48 hours to decide whether the students minded paying even more fees.

This resulted in a complete breakdown in true shared governance. Sure, the administration might have shared governance with SGA, but SGA was not able to share governance with the actual students. Many at Wednesday’s meeting believed that the biggest decision that has come in front of the Senate in two years should involve serious conversation with the students-especially when it comes to increasing fees.

I mean, an increase in student activity fees of less than $20 required a student vote. But $100 a year required two days of deliberation amongst 30 people?

That is wrong. So why didn’t SGA table the bill until next week, and tell Biondi we’ll get back to him after we check with our boss (the student body)?

The answer is simple. The administration scared the Senate. Provost Humphrey nicely told the Senate, “I won’t be mad if you delay it; I won’t be upset, but I will be nervous.”

The impression was given that if the SGA waited, then the administration would move on to other projects, forget the union until later date, and not involve the students at all, charging us up the hind end later. Well, that was enough to scare the SGA leadership into pushing for immediate passage of the Union endorsement, and therefore the cost increase.

There was a motion to table instead, calling the administration’s bluff, believing that the “attention-deficit disorder” administration would remember our blessed union project seven days later. Many senators found this unnecessary, using the excuse that Jay Perry had sent out an email to the entire student body, informing them of the bill, and no one showed up (24 hours later) to voice dissent.

So in the end, the SGA decided to charge you, though you may or may not have known about it. In the end, I think the students should be happy to pay. The investment will not be as bad as many of my mutual funds.

Plus, the limited responses that SGA did receive showed strong support for the Union, including the increase. This would have found strong student support.

In the end, the most damage done may be in the falling reputation of SGA in the eyes of the student body. Students may interpret SGA simply as a pawn of the dreaded administration.

This is where I will differ with my editors and disagree with the idea that the Senate was “chicken.”This view is pretty much wrong, though the administration did stiff arm the Senate into making a quick and undemocratic decision. For the students that should be considered chicken.