The Collegian

Issue date: 9/11/07 Section: News

Associated Students elec-

tions are being held today, did you know that (other than having just read it on the front page)?

The junior class still has no one running for vice president, the senior class has no one running for vice president, and many other significant holes exist in the system. Is this because students are apathetic or because they did not know that the opportunity was there for them?

Other than freshmen, how many people can explicitly say that they knew officer petitions were out?

Where are students to find this information?

The office of Student Involvement and Leadership (SIL) is basically the only resource. There was no announcement in the Campus Bulletin that petitions were due on Thursday. There was no mention of elections on Gaelpage. Even searching for the date of the elections on SMCNet proved futile.

There may be students out there who are absolutely capable of fulfilling the positions, whom, without public announcement, would not have thought about it otherwise. Because of this lack in advertising, we could have missed out on great student leaders.

The root of the problem is general campus communication.

Where are students to turn to find out what is happening at Saint Mary's College? Gaelpage had been a dud for so long that no one cares to look at it anymore, SMCNet is not user friendly and has a horrible search engine, The Collegian comes out once a week with a limited budget and over-extended staff, students are so used to their e-mail inboxes being inundated with school-wide e-mails that don't apply to them that they no longer read them, and some clubs and administrators are currently using Facebook with some success, but the announcements do not reach every member of the Saint Mary's community.

There exists no one central public forum.

We may live in an age where information needs to be fresh and eye-catching, otherwise the Millenials, who all happen to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, may not notice it. However, that does not mean that there cannot be one place to turn to for all the on campus news and resources.

We are all college students, we are thus all busy. We cannot spend the time to search multiple sources to find information. Also, we cannot suddenly decide that we are apt to do something that we did not think about before.

We need a single concrete system.

We need one reliable source to which we can turn to find information.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools