While the editors of The Mass Media often don’t see eye to eye with the members of our Student Senate, the editorial board still recognizes the important role the Student Senate plays in student life on this campus. That is the basis of our positive thoughts on seeing the senate membership swell to full size.

The UMB Student Senate has been conspicuously absent from view for the first months of this year, and we feel that the reason for this is most likely the skeletal staff with which they have been operating with until this point.

One of the primary reasons that the Student Senate was so severely understaffed over the summer and early fall was due to the inexplicable absence of a large number of legitimately elected senators. It seems that the bulk of these senators had run under the banner of the Radical Student Alliance in an effort to abolish the Student Senate and reform the undergraduate student government here at UMB.

Apparently, the students who professed an interest in reform decided that without a decisive majority of seats on the senate they were no longer interested in participating. It follows, then, that, judging by actions, not words, that those students are no longer interested in reform-for no reform of student government can occur without a voice in student government. No alliances can be built and no opponents swayed. No senators equals no input.

So, failing a complete overthrow of the Student Senate, the reformers were content to remain absent from the senate meetings altogether, allowing a structure they believed deficient to be even more deficient as a result of their absence.

But now a full senate is in place, full of senators who profess to be interested in serving their student constituents, not abandoning them. Let us hope that these new senators live up to their promise and support the students and student organizations as best they are able.