UW-Milwaukee’s student politicians found themselves shut down and locked out of their office after Student Senate Speaker Russell Rueden was accused of embezzling $10,000 while he was president of the Student Housing Administrative Council.

According to a story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Housing Council’s new president discovered in August that a $10,000 check went missing from the group’s fund-raising account. When he checked the credit union records, he found out that it had been deposited into an account belonging to a marketing firm that Rueden owned. He then went to the police, who investigated further.

Administrators shut down the student government after student leaders refused to turn over their financial records, saying they would conduct their own audit.
According to the article, the fund-raising account is totally under the control of the Housing Council president.

Students do, and should, have the right to some autonomy as far as managing funds. But when it comes to a criminal investigation, law enforcement officials need answers, and it may be the university’s place to investigate, but not to completely shut them down.

It seems severe to shut down the entire student government over one person’s alleged crime. But if it is true that a student leader took such a sizeable amount of money out of an account and thought he could get away with it, a better system of keeping track of the account is needed.

Students don’t always pay much attention to their student-body representatives.This incident should remind students to be aware of what’s going on in student government and to hold their representatives accountable. Even at the university level, it’s important to keep an eye on the people who are supposed to be looking out for student interests – and money.