I went to the dean of students candidate forums partially because I thought they might provide interesting fodder for an opinion piece, partially because I wanted to feel like I was actively involved in the selection process and partially because I was curious to hear what questions the students would ask.
For the most part, I wasn't too surprised. Turnout was dominated by representatives of student organizations, each of them largely looking out for their own interests'very political. And the questions didn't vary much from candidate to candidate, except when the in-house candidate asked questions of his audience.
\What are the biggest problems on campus?""
After cycling through the standard litany, one student of color paused for a second, and sighed with a sarcastic smile: ""Newspapers. That's all I have to say. Newspapers.""
All the air left my lungs. My stomach jumped to my throat.
My face turned red. And for a second, I was paralyzed.
Since then I've been thinking a lot about how the campus papers have related to students of color. Last year, things were certainly tense. The Multicultural Student Coalition pushed a huge budget through student government, mostly a result of hiring diversity education specialists who will work under the Dean of Students Office.
And the newspapers screamed. On one level it was setting an odd if not scary precedent: If the university can't fund its staff from state or tuition money, get student government, which wields quite a bit of autonomy on budgetary matters, to do it. (Then-Dean of Students Alicia Ch??vez attended a Student Services Finance Committee meeting supporting the initiative.)
On another level, it seemed like pork'a peculiar way for these organizations to get more money, thereby inflating their power. In other words, neither newspaper was sold on the need for diversity education specialists, much less the need to make students pay thousands of dollars for them.
And so, as well as I can figure, there are two major reasons why things have come to such a head. First, the MCSC, in particular, has not handled itself in the most media-friendly or politically savvy way. Ramming through a huge budget without making the case for why it was necessary for those increases only serves to polarize the MCSC.
Any newspaper that seeks to represent all students has a job to question funding decisions, especially ones with a huge price tag. And the MCSC needs to respect students' rights to demand fiscal responsibility from the organizations they fund.
Newspapers should serve as the grounds for a healthy debate about these issues. Refusing to speak to the media or regarding them as the enemy, only leads to further polarization and isolation.
This isn't to absolve the student media of any responsibility. It is up to them to win the trust of students of color. Campus newspapers need to do a better job of reaching students of color and ensuring that their viewpoints are fairly represented in coverage. Writing about student-of-color organizations only to denounce them is unfair at best, and downright oppressive at worst.
In short, newspapers need to end their monoculturalism, and student-of-color organizations need to stop viewing them as the opposition.
Newspapers should not be the enemies of students of color. They should join students of color in demanding fairness and equality. How can the student media help improve campus climate? Now that's a question we need to start asking. And until we ask it, newspapers won't stop being the problem.
