A student government should be built by students for students.

Recently, the Dean of Students recalled a decision made by the LSU Student Supreme Court, where they will review the case of the Forward ticket’s disqualification.

Dean of Students Fran’Cee Brown-McClure has said that a few of the judges can’t be impartial due to their involvement with both the Election Court and University Court. She also says that she doesn’t like the idea of them being disqualified anyway.

However, this begs the question of why LSU has the right to overturn a student Supreme Court case.

At that point, what is the point of a student government if LSU can just overturn the decision? To me, it sets a bad precedent for future campaigns, allowing blatant bribery for votes without fear of disqualification.

Furthermore, before the Foret-Tatman disqualification, state representatives Gregory Miller and Alan Seabaugh wrote a letter to LSU to halt the disqualification of the Forward ticket. Why are state officials meddling in the student government elections in the first place?

Furthermore, is this how our state politicians wish to spend their time? We have horrible roads, insurance prices are skyrocketing and the minimum wage is still $7.25. Yet, instead of trying to fix any of these problems, the aforementioned politicians are writing to LSU in support of a disqualified ticket.

Especially now that the ticket is reinstated, the fact that these two were endorsed by a politician who supports murder charges for women who get an abortion — with no exceptions for rape and incest, we should speculate on what influence Miller, Seabaugh or any other state politician has over LSU’s student government.

The worst part about this situation is that it truly threatens the integrity of student government.

How do we know that this government is run by the students for the students, with no outside influences?

How are we to trust that this election will be fair, with LSU’s obvious favoritism toward the Forward party, allowing them to buy lunch for others in order to get endorsements?

There are already organizations, such as the Campus Victory Project, founded by Turning Point USA, that exist to implement and install “conservative values” into higher education. We don’t know if they’re at LSU yet, but if they are, we, as students, should do all we can to prevent them from influencing our elections.

It doesn’t matter the politics of the outside influence; as students, we cannot let these outside organizations meddle in our elections at all. Student governments are our last true bastion of free, uninfluenced democracy left in the country, and if we destroy that, we might as well no longer have them.

The precedent LSU is setting with this recall is a threat to our university’s democracy. We cannot let the university do this without some opposition.

This was an overstep on LSU’s part; they needed to step back and know their place. Students must write to the Dean’s office, condemning this decision and requesting a retraction of this recall, allowing the student government system to work as intended — uninterrupted.

Andrew Sarhan is a mass communication freshman from Baton Rouge, La.