Passing legislation to simply congratulate the football team shows the need to reform student representation at Penn State.

Semester after semester, we see internal bickering within Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and random pieces of legislation brought up by our elected representatives, which have little, if any, effect on students.

There's definitely a need for change. But the proposed University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) is not the right change.

If implemented, UPUA, which would consist of a one-body system, would replace USG, which currently has a bicameral system.

USG President Galen Foulke has backed up the UPUA proposal from the get-go, saying a government-based system does not represent students, but UPUA, without the complex checks and balances, would advocate for the students.

The new system would provide no checks on the president and vice president. Whereas Senate, Academic Assembly and Supreme Court currently check USG's executive, the UPUA proposal gives the two offices unlimited power. Ideally students within the organization would provide such checks and not the administration.

But, if one looks closely at the UPUA constitution there's a trend toward administrative power. Unlike USG's internal process of revising its constitution, amendments to UPUA's constitution would have to be approved by an administrator, faculty member and two undergraduate students.

This outsources the power of an organization that should represent the students to the administration.

Coincidentally, after University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) ran out of funds for student groups three weeks ago, Students for Real Advocacy received $3,000 in anonymous donations by way of Director of Unions and Student Activities Stan Latta to fund and publicize a student survey in an attempt to implement UPUA.

This survey, which is run by the University Testing Services, was available on Penn State Web space, but an opposing group, Safeguarding Traditions of Penn State, did not receive such resources.

The 34-member UPUA included 12 representatives from each college, three on-campus representatives, six off-campus representatives, one UPAC representative, six at-large representatives and four greek council representatives. Three additional seats were then added to the UPUA constitution to include one female representative, one lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) representative and one "student of color." But these numbers do not accurately represent the 40,000 students who make up University Park.

How can Foulke ask one female student, one LGBT student and one "student of color" to act as a voice for the many students at University Park who fall into these categories?

Foulke plans on bringing the results of Thursday's and today's referenda to Penn State President Graham Spanier so that hopefully he will implement UPUA.

Since last semester, Foulke's familiar refrain has been student input. But two closed-ended referendum questions and last-minute publicity about the issue do not qualify as credible student input.

We do need change, and we do need better representation, but UPUA is not the way to do it.