Marquette Warrior: Student Government President Won’t Talk to Bloggers

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Student Government President Won’t Talk to Bloggers

A somewhat disturbing post on the blog The MUSG Disconnect records the fact that MUSG President Brock Banks refuses to talk to bloggers.

Specifically, he sent blogger Joseph Schuster the following e-mail:
My door is always open to talk with students about particular concerns or ideas that they may have. In fact, you can stop by the MUSG office (AMU 133) to review my hours of availability.

However, I am aware that you have a blog that also serves as a forum to address MUSG issues. It has been and continues to be MUSG policy not to do interviews with or provide press releases to individuals bloggers. These are reserved for media outlets such as the Marquette Tribune, Warrior, and other such news sources. Any “interview” would have to be strictly off the record and not for the purpose of your blog. If you have further questions about our policy, please contact the Communications Vice President Jillian Mertz.

If you have a particular question or concern, please do not hesitate to come to the office. I am more than willing to help out in any way that I can.
Why won’t Banks talk to bloggers? He doesn’t explain, but we imagine it might have something to do with the fact that bloggers are capable of being pretty critical of MUSG.

We wrote Banks, asking whether the Schuster post was accurate. His response (or rather non-response):
Thanks for offering me the opportunity to respond, but I’m going to decline.
In other words, stonewall.

There must be something in the air in the Alumni Memorial Union that turns the people there into timid, risk averse petty bureaucrats. First the University Ministry won’t let the student organization Catholic Outreach talk to The Warrior, and now Banks refuses to talk to The MUSG Disconnect -- or to us, for that matter.

Banks failure to respond simply reinforces Schuster’s view of student government. What we have are students who pretend to be important, and go through the motions of being important in their little playpen, but who in fact are divorced from any real student concerns.

Brandon Henak at GOP3.COM views the organization the same way.

Stubbornly refusing to communicate to anybody who might be critical is not going to help the image of MUSG.

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