OUR VIEW: Shining the light on government
A government hiding, in the shadow, isn’t a good government at all. That’s the “Reader’s Digest” version of some verbose intellect from a long time ago. The exact words aren’t important, it’s the philosophy behind them that is.
As journalists we’re always trying to shine the light on the dark activities in different parts of society – governments usually garner most of the attention of our collective candlepower.
Instead of doing business in the dark, ASUSU is planning on shining the big, proverbial flashlight on their actions. Don’t like the metaphor? In plain language this time: ASUSU is working on creating a regular newsletter to let the student body know what they’re up to. And that’s a good thing, a round of applause for our student government.
The idea behind this newsletter is to give students an idea of what’s going on so they don’t assume nothing is going on. We need to know what our government is doing and what they plan on doing, so we, as the people they represent, can go voice our displeasure or pleasure or just plain have a voice in the process – especially on important issues like tuition or smoking.
Besides informing the students about the goings on in the upper regions of the Taggart Student Center, we’d also like the newsletter to serve as a guide to upcoming legislative activities. Give the students information on agendas and maybe even a little information about the legislation.
The inclusion of meeting times and locations would also benefit students who’ve wanted to attend a meeting but weren’t able to easily find out when and where it was happening.
The same goes for contact information for ASUSU senators and other representatives. Provide the students with the easiest way to get in touch with their student government officials.
Most of all, our hope for this newsletter is that it will provide another forum for students to get information about what their student government is doing for them. Any way the students can stay abreast of the happenings of ASUSU is for the better. An informed citizenry is one apt to make good decisions and not stand for any governmental injustice. Not that there can be a considerable amount of that at the student government level, but even the least bit shouldn’t be tolerated.
It’s never a bad thing for a governing body to inform their constituents. So, again, we applaud ASUSU for at least making strides toward fully lit operation.