Student Life sucks.
That is a complaint I hear pretty much every day. My friends say it. People in Internet communities say it. Even random people in my classes decide to tell me how Student Life is the root of all evil. And to an extent, they’re right: our national bureau is really slacking. But the complainers really need to understand something about Student Life. Nearly everybody who writes for Student Life is a student, with similar time constraints as other students, in addition to having to write articles. And writing articles is a lot of work. They generally require lots of research as well as interviews (that is more true for sections like News than sections like Forum, but it still applies). Imagine having to find the time to interview people for an article and then writing the article by your deadline, on top of all your other time commitments. Thinking about that sure makes me happy that all I have to do is write a 500-word column every week, which requires thinking about something new to write about every week and researching the topic when necessary.
Another thing that people don’t realize is how separate Forum is from the rest of the paper. Until I became an editor, I wasn’t even on the staff e-mail list, despite having the title “Staff Columnist” under my name every other week. What appears in Forum is a reflection of the author, not the paper as a whole (with the obvious exception of the staff editorial). If people complain about Forum, there’s a pretty obvious solution: write a letter to the editor or an op-ed. We rarely pick and choose what goes into Forum, and when we do reject something, it is more due to concerns about libel or a lack of substantive opinion rather than an opinion we don’t like. When people complain about Forum, they are complaining about the opinions of one person (unless it’s the staff editorial, which would be a complaint about the opinions of a small group of people). Moreover, they can easily fix their problem with Forum by submitting their own opinion. So if people think Forum is the worst section ever put on paper, they should write a letter to the editor, or better yet, an op-ed. But even if you hate Forum (or any other section, that still isn’t a good reason to hate Student Life as a whole. It only serves to show that one person disagrees with another person.
Student Life may not be The New York Times, but hey, even the Times had Jayson Blair.
Some other ramblings:
– Team 31 should be hard at work to get Ted Leo and the Pharmacists to come back to campus for spring WILD. He’s more than just a great musician – Ted Leo proved to be a great performer at his concert at the Gargoyle. Along with his alternating irreverent and political banter between songs, Ted Leo played his heart out, even though most of his shows probably have more in attendance than what he played in front of on Sunday (more than the 500 people that the Gargoyle can hold, let alone the number of people that were actually in attendance). Visibly tired, he consented to play one more song after playing the song that he said would be his last. Overall, it was an incredible show from Mr. Leo and his rowdy gang of Pharmacists.
– Further discrediting my own personal notion that there is no school pride, my suitemates and I, who have never been to a Wash. U. sporting event, cheered after Jayanth Iyengar got the Final Jeopardy! question correct.
I am curious, though: did Iyengar know the answer was Frank Lloyd Wright, or was that just a guess?
Daniel is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor.