Miami Student

Issue date: 1/15/08 Section: OpEd Page

By Katelyn Hawthorne

This issue of The Miami Student marks the beginning of my tenure as one-half of the editorial editing staff. Filling the position of the recently graduated Brian Graney, I feel that this editorial section has been reaching excellent levels of local, national and international coverage on issues ranging from analysis of Oxford City Council elections to columns on heads-of-state and varying transnational concerns. However, there is always more to strive for in order to make this editorial section, and The Miami Student as a whole, the best publication that it can be.

This evolution does not just rest on the shoulders of the staff, but functions as a reciprocal and interconnected relationship between the editors and you: the audiences here at Miami University and the alumni who still stay connected to its activities and read these pages. Every audience demographic that we have-from Oxford residents to parents who read their son's or daughter's articles to new students who pick up a copy of The Student for the first time-all deserve for us on the staff to make the best paper that we can, and the entire Miami family should be part of that process. Some members of this family are critical of the work we do and what we produce. This paper can only function on the feedback from its readers. Comments in the form of e-mails and letters, short or lengthy, positive or negative, are a crucial element in the process of streamlining and fortifying these pages, and it depends on an active audience.

As cliché as it seems, it is so easy to be a passive audience, and even easier to negatively critique on the fly. Engaged feedback and support is paramount-if you care about the issues that we cover (e.g., international elections, humanitarian interventions, etc.) then you need to challenge us to keep current and informative on the most pressing events that surround us at home and throughout the world. This is the importance of the Miami voice and perspective-these are our peers who write the weekly columns and letters to the editor surrounding numerous issues. These are people who live with you, have class with you, eat meals with you and play the critical function of informing our well-connected little community through the lens of life at Miami.

It is all too easy to pick up The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times and forget or ignore the ability of a local paper to make an enormous impact. Why should our newspaper be any different in terms of information and education? Many university newspapers seem to think that they should stick to local news. "Who are we," the sentiment must echo, "to comment on events thousands of miles away that are only tangentially related to our student body?" After all, it is easy to let others carry the charge of teaching and informing.

Continued...

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