Given the choice, the average student would most definitely prefer an administration that factored student opinion into University policy over one that entirely ignored it. It's only fair. And, on the upside, a number of recent decisions affecting our campus have reflected a desire on the part of Yeshiva to do so. While the rest of this newspaper is often devoted to examining the remaining decisions - those that seem to solidify the perception that student opinion is worth a tad less than a piece of steak at a vegetarian convention - we herein address a problem that plagues even the former group of decisions.

The problem we refer to stems not from malice, but instead from misunderstanding. A handful of stories, one of which involved the seemingly inane and unnecessarily intricate process used to select a Yeshiva College valedictorian, find the administration hiding not behind their typical Fifth Amendment "no comment" (debatable) privileges, but instead behind the mask of the student senate.

Now, if the Deans Office desires to factor students into the creation of a process is sincere, and we have little reason to assume otherwise, their failure to actually do so is a shame. Referendums are more than often impractical. And so, since the days of Athenian society, we have elected representatives to, however imperfectly, express our collective opinion. Yeshiva is seemingly no different.

We have a student council, and we have elected its members to serve and represent us in everyday dealings with the administration. Any moves that the administration feels it would like to claim to be a composite of student and administrative decisions can be done so only through referendum or YCSC consultation. Half of the students don't know what the senate is, and the half that does fails to see what a group of individuals handpicked by a small group of students looking to fill the extracurricular section on their resumes should nullify our elections in YCSC.

And, while we're on the subject, why in G-d's name, is it called the Senate? Its seven members aren't even a multiple of the one hundred that would merit its name; they propose no bills and have no veto process; and they're located as far from Washington, D.C. as our Commentator office. Just about the only thing that the Senate and its namesake share is the fact that our senate and the leader of the real one were not elected by the people they "govern."