Call us old-fashioned, but we at the Daily News still believe that with education comes responsibility. We believe that the primary purpose of our time here at Ball State is dedication to academics. We believe that Ball State should provide us with the best possible education in our half a decade here. And if, in turn, we have to give up one Saturday a year to take our final exams, then that's okay with us.
The Student Government Association apparently disagrees with our beliefs.
When SGA first introduced legislation to do away with Saturday finals, the Daily News spoke out against it in this space. The organization passed legislation last year to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a holiday, and the Saturday finals legislation would mark the second time in two years that SGA tried to remove a day from the academic calendar.
Doesn't SGA, the Daily News asked at the time, have anything better to do than knock days off the academic calendar?
Apparently not. The legislation passed this last Wednesday.
We would take heart in the fact that the vote was a close one and that at least some students had the courage and the wisdom to see that some things are important enough to give up a Saturday for.
But there weren't. The vote passed unanimously.
We would take heart in the fact that the vote came only after a long and heated debate, in which one brilliant public speaker after another took to the microphone in support of this legislation, swaying the rest of the senate to their point of view.
But that, of course, did not happen either.
In fact, the only discussion on the legislation came when Senator Billie Laverghetta suggested changing the language of the legislation to make it absolutely clear that the students should still have Labor Day off.
The Daily News could see supporting this legislation if it did not remove a day from the calendar. If, in short, Labor Day ceased to be a holiday. But that's not what the Student Government Association wants. They want to have it both ways. They want to do away with Saturday finals but still keep all of our current vacation days intact.
For a long time now, SGA has been sliding downward into irresponsibility and irrelevance. Important legislation has grown rarer and rarer, and the legislation the body does introduce has shown a marked decline in research and logic. If the senate wants to continue its downward descent, that's fine with us. But don't drag the rest of the university down with you.
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