Another year, another SGA president in trouble.

Welcome to the new SGA. Same as the old one. Less than a year after Andres Vargas faced OSCCR for hosting a party attended by some underage guests, another SGA president finds his future at the mercy of the university’s judicial system.

Michael Benson, elected SGA president in April after a heated debate with former SGA president Bill Durkin, finds himself and Executive Vice President Chad Cooper forced to appeal a sanction passed by OSCCR after the two were accessing private files on a university computer server.

All this latest episode in the SGA soap opera reveals is the ever-widening disconnect between the students and their supposed leaders. One of Benson’s goals as president was “producing a more cohesive senate,” but all he has accomplished thus far is adding more fuel to the fire of the 36 senators who voted against him, all without serving a single week in office.

Even worse, for the second straight year, the student body is faced with an embattled leader. Granted, the SGA has long viewed the students as the elephant in the room nobody talks about, but if Benson wants to establish himself as a true student body leader, he has only one course of action: apologize.

All he has to do is give an up front explanation to the students and members of SGA who put their faith in him of exactly what happened and apologize for any wrongdoing. A majority of students don’t know who he is anyway, so the disappointment will probably be minimal.

Obviously, there are legal ramifications involved in the appeals process, but it would be a great show of faith for the president to come forward and work to be trusted again by the student body and the SGA Senate.

Of course, politicians are often too proud to admit any wrongdoing (just ask President George W. Bush), but there’s a crucial distinction. Benson is not a politician. He’s a student leader. His duty is not only to SGA, but to the other approximately 14,000 who inexplicably aren’t allowed to cast a vote for their leader. From Vargas’ forced resignation to the hideously inept tuition hike negotiations to the dramatic debate back in April, it hasn’t exactly been a banner year for the SGA.

The SGA is facing yet another crisis this year, and is in very real danger of losing one-third of its executive board. If Benson believes any of what he said during the April debate, he will work to rectify, in his own words, “every issue, not just the glamorous ones.”

It’s certainly not a glamorous issue, but it’s one issue that could end his term as president before it continues any further.