*This story is part of our 2010-11 Mizzou in Review series.*

Students’ concerns regarding the UM System’s most pressing issues have fallen on deaf ears this year in the Missouri House of Representatives.

The push for a voting student member of the UM System Board of Curators was shot down by the House this legislative session by a vote of 99-53, rejecting students’ efforts to actually have a say at the university’s highest level of governance.

The House’s budget, which addresses higher education in House Bill 3, was passed and would cut higher education funding 7 percent from the previous fiscal year.

Legislation that would provide millions of dollars in bond money to Missouri public university campuses to take care of deferred maintenance projects and other campus facilities needs still has yet to gain support to leave the committee.

Although the House as a whole has turned its eyes away from college students, Columbia representatives Mary Still, Chris Kelly and Stephen Webber have each in their own way tuned into student interests. Still has been pushing for the voting student curator position, Kelly has been pushing for his bond issue and Webber, along with Still, voted against HB 3, dealing with higher education funding.

A voting student curator would give the students a formal voice, instead of just informal input on what is decided for the UM System. Bond money would prevent MU and other Missouri public universities from having building issues fall through the cracks and get to the point where there are too many structural problems to be adequately addressed. And to sum it all up, higher education funding has once again been reduced.

Apparently, the House didn’t hear the pleas of its collegiate constituents.