I am writing in response to the article written by Leslie Andres regarding Student Government's proposed constitution. The article was printed in the March 25 edition of the University Chronicle. In the article, Leslie Andres stated that he was unable to contact certain Student Government officials and that his attempts were futile or in other words, useless.
The full details of the situation have not been revealed to students and that, my friend, is a very poor journalist. It is not right for journalists like Leslie to use Student Government as a scapegoat for his lack of preparation and organization. The University Chronicle has blamed Student Government for the lack of commentary in the article when it is no one's fault but their own. The members of the University Chronicle should know that it is unrealistic to leave a message on a person's answering machine at 9:30 p.m. on a Sunday night and then expect to receive a phone call back within three hours.
Granted, Leslie did not leave the message himself, I left the message due to a policy we uphold within our office. The Student Government office does not provide media with contact information for our officials with out prior consent. As in any situation, the office will always offer to leave a message for the person. A message was left on our Constitutional Review Committee Chairperson's answering machine at 9:30 p.m. and apparently was not returned in a timely manner because it was not returned by midnight. We feel that these expectations are unrealistic. If the University Chronicle feels that Student Government officials should be at their disposal at any given moment to ensure that they get their story, then the very least we should expect as students, is to be told the truth about the entire situation. If Leslie would have allotted more than a three hours for himself to obtain the necessary commentary he would have received an answer to his question regarding our constitution and could have written a truthful article with actual content.
To address the issue regarding the constitution, Student Government believes that we should not be involved with firing and hiring editors and other members of our student media. We believe that to establish journalistic integrity, all media should have some form of autonomy on our campus without fear of repercussion. We would like to impose that ideology on our campus. It is apparent however, with the printing of article in the University Chronicle that the University Chronicle has a problem with this stand. So to set your mind at ease, the superceding document, MnSCU board polices, still stand. So if the time does come where an issue needs to be addressed, our constitution would fall back on the policies.
Overall I'm saddened by the direction the University Chronicle wants to go with the position of media on our campus. We were hoping that we could work together and create a more autonomous student media culture on our campus. That I suppose, will now have to wait.
Shahjehan Ganny
President
SCSU Student Government
