When Layne Rouse campaigned for vice president, he told students that the Students’ Association faced a crisis. Little did he know how true those words were.

Rather than the crisis of choice that Rouse foretold, SA faces a crisis of confidence, one created by its current president and exacerbated by the four vying to replace him.

First, President Jeremy Smith decided to skip the final SA meetings, something he considered his constitutional right.

The Constitution is far less clear about such things than Smith may have thought, but one thing is perfectly clear: Smith is wrong for skipping these meetings.

The student body elects its president to carry out his duties to the best of his ability. Smith may feel he is a detriment to the meetings by attending, but that is for Congress to decide through impeachment.

Smith’s abdication of even this small part of his duties is a breaking of his promise to the students to do his job. That eviscerates the trust the students have in their government.

But nothing compares to the irony that saw Erin Baldwin and Taylor Hemness charge Jonathan Wilkerson with running an unethical campaign before his runoff against Shep Strong.

Baldwin had more election rules violations than Wilkerson, and hers were more serious.

Strong too had more violations than Wilkerson. Hemness had no violations, but didn’t campaign in any appreciable manner.

Such caterwauling among candidates, who just days before had said “any one of us would make a good president,” is sickening. After weeks of going so far as to refuse to hand in debate questions so as to avoid hurting friendships, the students are treated to the grand show of politics, complete with differing versions of events and an independent investigation.

This crisis could have been avoided if the president had done his job and the candidates for his replacement had followed the rules and acted in a responsible manner. These things did not happen. And thus, SA faces a crisis.

It has only its leaders to blame.