I want to respond to the comments of Gretchen Lasser and amplify those of Justin Gutting in yesterday's Collegian article "Students apathetic to USG breakup." Somehow students like Lasser think that it is the fault of USG that they are uninformed. Students like Gutting don't know what they actually know.

"They don't have a lot of influence with the administration," he said, and that is precisely the problem. The administration under President Graham Spanier and Vice President of Student Affairs Vicky Triponey has destroyed student authority and influence and has stripped students of all their governing rights. And to be clear, Spanier was wrong. The administration certainly did not try to stay uninvolved. Instead, he and his fellow administrators created this situation.

Because we live in litigious times, Penn State administrators are unwilling to risk providing any authority or influence to "lowly," "immature" and "irresponsible" students. This situation is completely different from our partner institutions in the Big Ten, where students are asked for input and, in most cases, have significant authority over tuition, fee changes and budgeting, for example. Contrary to Greg Heleniak's recent assertions on this Opinion Page, our student activity fee stands as one of the highest, if not the highest, in the Big Ten. And we as students have no democratically elected representative with a voting stake in the development of this fee.

For a university that touts its students as some of the brightest and most involved in the country in promotional material or during Lion Ambassador tours, Penn State certainly does not treat its students with the respect of shared governance that such bright and involved students deserve, at least according to our partner institutions in the Big Ten. USG has been shouting this from the rooftops for the past years, Lasser. Why weren't you listening? Inform yourself now. This is not the responsibility of USG, or now UPUA, to make sure students like you take the time to understand this travesty that the administration has perpetuated, especially when these organizations provide myriad opportunities for you to do so.