Editor’s note: Student Senate reporter Nicole Strittmater did not participate in this editorial board.

It’s one thing to make a mistake. It’s another to not learn from it.

According to an article in the April 24 issue of The Spectator, former senator Jacob Boer and current finance commission director Tom Holtan received letters expressing Senate’s disapproval with their actions during this year’s student body elections. Boer violated election bylaws by announcing that he had clicked “submit” in the online voting system 30 times for various people as reported in the April 17 issue of The Spectator; Holtan violated bylaws by sending a mass e-mail to a campus organization he’s involved in urging people to vote for him and a few other candidates. The letters were to have been put in both students’ permanent academic files.

Despite the citations, Senate voted 26-0-1 to remove the letters from their files so as to move on from the election, according to the April 24 article. This, in addition to the Senate’s decision to not hold a re-election, shows how little Student Senate is willing to own up to the mistakes of this disastrous election.

Student Senate has to reestablish confidence in the student body, which this action does not engender. If these students did something wrong, why are they not being punished? Where is the accountability for their actions? This should have been an opportunity to address the violations these students committed and show current and future senators this type of behavior is unacceptable. Instead, they are given amnesty and the issue is put out of mind.

This is only one of the examples of how Student Senate has skirted responsibility following this debacle of an election. In that same Spectator article, Student Senate voted to not have a re-election 11-14-2 despite the many hitches in the election process. Senators need to be willing to sacrifice their time to give students an election they know is fair and representative of their opinions. But Student Senate instead chose to ignore the long list of discrepancies in the election, even if they threatened the fairness of the process.

Removing the letters from Holtan and Boer’s academic records withers away at the student body’s confidence in Student Senate. It seems as if Student Senate is trying to cover its tail, doing its best to keep its mistakes quiet. There should be as much openness as possible in the aftermath of the questionable student body election, but Student Senate continues to sweep its mistakes under the rug. Student Senate is ignoring its problems instead of doing what it takes to learn from them