It is increasingly clear the Associated Students of Madison is either a group thoroughly overtaken by narcissistic delusion or a student government that plainly doesn’t understand the importance of high level personnel decisions. ASM now plans to whine before the Board of Regents about not being granted a duo of appointments to the Dean of Education Search and Screen Committee. Given the dysfunctional body’s history of embarrassment, we can’t help but wonder if there might be an even bigger waste of the Regents’ time.

Wisconsin law is clear: shared governance of the University of Wisconsin System with students is a must. But nowhere in the many statutes drafted on the other end of State Street will one find language granting ASM exclusive rights to speak for the student body. And ASM certainly hasn’t earned the right either. It would seem that between humiliatingly immature “accountability sessions” with Chancellor John Wiley and wantonly wasteful resolutions attempting to affect state, national and international politics, student government has reached a new low.

When students from the School of Education were selected independent of ASM bureaucracy to sit on the committee, it seemed like a wise idea. Naming students with a vested interest in the selection of a new dean is shared governance at its finest.

But ASM, already approaching totally impotence, seems to have finally enjoyed an epiphany as to how well things can function in its absence, and is consequently fighting to hold on to its last remnants of “power.”

The gravity of this hiring decision is considerable. So do us all a favor, ASM, and step to the side — the bell just rang and you haven’t earned your hall pass.