Oxymoron of the week: “professional Student Association.”

The SA began the year with promises of professionalism. Well, after Sunday night’s SA meeting, SA Vice President Anastasia Criscione’s hair must be standing on end. Criscione was the architect of the SA’s alleged newfound professionalism which was promptly thrown out the window by angry senators.

The unprofessionalism all started when Jodie English, the loser in last semester’s race for SA president, appointed herself to be a justice on the SA Supreme Court. This was well within her rights but was of questionable ethicality nonetheless. English came under heat for her decision as well as her scandal last semester involving alleged attempted bribery of her landlord against another SA staff member.

English resigned from the slot, doing a Sinead O’Connor impression and saying, “I wish you would stop talking about me.” If that weren’t enough, SA Sen. Gino Barrto threatened to rip fellow SA Sen. Dan Gaddis’ head off over the matter. Gaddis asked to address the SA and said, “Will the senator behind me please sit at his place so I won’t have to hear his voice?” Truly comical, yet somehow not quite as professional as the SA executive board professed.

Despite all of this childish foolery, Sen. Nicole Howell managed to raise an important point. The SA Supreme Court nominees certainly were not representative of NIU’s student body. One would think the SA would have learned from last year’s election time fiasco and have been more sensitive.

On the plus side, the SA did move quickly to oppose an administration plan which would inconvenience students by adjusting the academic calendar year.

We’d like to see more of this. The SA has been surprisingly quiet this year, maybe spending too much time trying to be professional and not enough time tackling important issues.