Over winter break, the Board of Regents held a special meeting to announce the appointment of Interim President Donald Loppnow.
A group of EMU students attended this meeting and left feeling as though the election of the new interim president was unfair, and they believe that Michigan’s state constitution should not allow EMU’s Board of Regents to be appointed by the governor and should be elected democratically through the university.
However, even if they were to elect a new interim president democratically, another problem that these students recognized is that the meeting was announced on the last day of finals and took place after the semester had already ended. This leads them to question how fair any electoral process used would really be due to a lack of attendance.
The group of students that attended the meeting are now referring to themselves as Action League Now! The group is relatively small, only consisting of five members. This group has created an online petition to gain awareness and gather the support of students and faculty that the EMU Board of Regents should be elected democratically. According to the online petition page, the group has obtained 95 signatures, with a goal of gathering a total of 100. Also found on this page is their open letter to the university on the matter.
Action League Now! stresses how much it believes that the university is being run as a business rather than a school. It recognize that even though more students are coming in, prices and fees are going up, such as the almost 8 percent tuition increase that was instated this past fall, and the announcement that on-campus housing costs will increase for the upcoming 2016-2017 school year.
Along with getting a handle on the election process at EMU, this petition was designed for the democratic election process to be reinstated at other universities such as Western, Central, and Northern Michigan University. Action League Now! said it strives for equality and is open to members of any background.
The petition can be found here.
