Early last week, the Union Senate impeached Off-Campus Senator Bryan Lober '06, calling him a "destabilizing force" and citing his poor attendance at weekly Union Senate meetings. By Thursday, Lober and former Class of 2004 Senator Mark Brescia staged what amounts to little more than a baseless counterattack, petitioning to recall Union Vice President Kenneth Gantz '04 who broached the topic of attendance at last Sunday's Senate meeting. Both sides are digging in to their positions. Brescia and Lober insist that steps to recall Gantz are entirely warranted. Those senators present at last week's meeting confirmed the validity of Lober's impeachment with a unanimous vote. But these instances of Union officials challenging their colleagues signal the beginning of a "blame game" within the Union Senate, turning the discourse of some of our important elected officials into petty bickering.

Obviously, if an official is preventing the Student Union from effectively serving the Brandeis community, then action must be taken to remedy the situation. However, there comes a time when excessive disputes regarding its internal structure and politic appear more like useless quibbling and fail to improve the Union's ability to best serve its constituents.

Only two hours of last Sunday's hour meeting were spent deciding on the expenditure of a significant amount of the Union's discretionary fund. However, a confidential executive session discussing the issue of Lober's impeachment devoured three hours of the meeting. News interviews last week revealed that neither the Senate nor Lober and Brescia presented many hard facts to support their opinions about individual senators' failure to excel in their senatorial positions. It seems members of the Union government may be falling into the ill-fated practice of unsubstantiated name-calling instead of reserving their time and preserving their group dynamic to more successfully address loftier issues affecting their constituents.