Column: Statesman Soapbox

After nine months in hibernation, a proposal to offer benefits to domestic partners is back on the table for Utah State University’s Faculty Senate.

Whether or not students, faculty and community members are for or against the idea, the administration is taking steps to ensure the controversial proposal does not receive any unnecessary publicity, and for good reason.

However, in an effort to protect the reputation of USU’s “quality education,” its ethical foundation is treading shaking ground.

Just days after the issue was raised, the university held a faculty forum Nov. 21, dealing with issues unrelated to domestic partner benefits but an important meeting nonetheless.

The only problem was that a local newspaper article stated the issue of benefits would be raised that day. So the university took precautions so the meeting wouldn’t be flooded with unwelcome reporters. Naturally, the best option may have seemed to just close the meeting to the press.

That’s exactly what they did.

So when I came to that meeting and was asked to leave, my first instinct was to wonder what the university was hiding. If they weren’t discussing the domestic-partner benefits issue, why was the meeting closed to the press in the first place?

The most frustrating part, however, was that the university violated Utah law which allows meetings to be closed only for specific reasons, none of which applied to last week’s meeting.

As a journalism student, I regularly attend meetings involving campus issues. That’s my job. Students and the public in general have a right to know what is going on at this university and as a public representative I have a right and an obligation to make sure that information is available, whether it’s good publicity or not.

If the university decides it can close a meeting such as this for no valid reason at all, who knows when it will close the next one that may be significantly more important.

This should not be tolerated. No matter how difficult to work with reporters and the press may seem to be, we are the campus voice. Students who invest thousands of dollars into their educations have a right to know where their money is going what decisions are being made at this institution.

Marie MacKay is a senior majoring in print journalism and the assistant news editor for the Utah Statesman.