I wish to commend and strongly endorse the opinions expressed by guest columnist Taral Patel in Friday's Daily Texan encouraging students to run for positions in UT Student Government. Long before most of your readers were probably even born, I was an undergraduate at UT in 1983. At that time, we had NO student government at all as it had been abolished. Those of us who believed in the importance of active representation worked hard to successfully restore it. It would be disingenuous to suggest that we did not want to highlight our efforts on our resumes; we definitely did. But that takes nothing away from our sincere efforts to restore an important tool that had been taken away in the late 1970s. Those who are curious can read all about our efforts via your archives, but the bottom line is — as a good friend of mine once opined — "Those who think things can't be any worse demonstrate a profound lack of imagination."

So good luck, be grateful for what you've got, try to improve it, and may the best candidates win!

— John Stephen Taylor, government alumnus, in response to Patel’s Friday column titled “Student Government a great way to effect change at UT.”