Here we go again.

After a relatively quiet semester in which internal fighting in the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) has been less, at least relative to past years, the USG Academic Assembly voted Monday night to impeach President Galen Foulke. The Assembly's grounds for impeachment included allegations that Foulke has failed to serve student interest by, among other things, creating a committee to re-evaluate and possibly restructure the USG Constitution, a major goal of the Foulke campaign last spring. Tuesday night, the USG Senate decided to go ahead with the impeachment proceedings. But this situation will do nothing to help USG and, in reality, probably fails to represent student interest more than the Constitutional re-write ever could. Students elected Foulke and Vice President Luke Adams on this platform, a major part of the pair's campaign last spring. Secondly, revamping the USG Constitution is probably the most important thing anyone in USG has done to improve the organization's bureaucracy in recent memory. USG is currently structured like the U.S. government, which serves multi-year terms. USG members are elected to one-year terms, and when USG gets so caught up arguing minute points from the branch's bylaws or the USG Constitution, hours go by, meetings pass, and nothing gets done. The organization needs a new structure. It needs new rules to follow, perhaps new names for branches and positions, and absolutely, it needs to realize that the role of USG is not to serve as a group with actual power, but to be an advocate to the administration for student rights and student issues. What this issue comes down to is USG takes itself too seriously for an organization that is supposed to be simply an advocate group that has developed a relationship with administrators. USG should be a voice for students who normally do not have one. If every branch of USG truly had the best interests of students in mind, time would not be wasted on internal bickering because, in the end, those things give the administration an incentive to pull the plug on student government. Whether USG realizes it or not, the organization does not function independently of Penn State. It gets its power from the Office of Student Affairs, and it can lose its power from the Office of Student Affairs. And while no, "pulling the plug" on USG is not on the radar screen, it is controversy and fighting that could give higher-ups reason to do just that.

Students elected Foulke in part because of this Constitutional re-write. Give Foulke a chance, give the re-write a chance. Don't be afraid of change, maybe that's what students are looking for.