I do not believe the glass is always half-full.
I do not believe every cloud has a silver lining.
I do not believe every thing has a bright side.
However, I do believe everyone deserves a fair shake. In recent weeks, the Student Assembly has not received a fair shake.
Although I have only been active on the Student Assembly since this academic year's Fall term, I am aware of the body's quarrelsome reputation. Nevertheless, under able leadership and with enthusiastic members, this year's Assembly has begun to shed this reputation and has produced student services and academic policies which has given the Assembly new credibility. In under a year, the formerly sensational and fight-torn Dartmouth Student Assembly is now a thing of the past.
While students may be aware of these changes and the reduced infighting, that is all they know.
The Assembly is one of the main providers of student services and students deserve to know what goes on in each and every meeting.
However, in recent weeks, The Dartmouth, traditionally the link between the Assembly and the student body, has had incomplete news coverage of the most important and pertinent decisions made by the Assembly.
Why has this happened?
Perhaps one may feel that the Assembly's existence no longer deserves acknowledgment in light of its less sensationalistic behavior. This argument is neither justified nor fair. The accomplishments of the Assembly this year deserve as much press, if not more press, than the infighting Assemblies of the past.
In just the first weeks of the winter term, the Assembly introduced new student services few students are fully informed about.
The most important of these projects is the On-Line Student Course Guide on the World Wide Web. It is a more economic and technically more efficient version of past course guides.
Members of the Assembly and the Golden Key National Honor Society spent months working on this project to provide students with a complete and accurate evaluation of almost seventy courses offered this past fall.
Despite the success of this project and the surprising praise from past Assembly foes, the Guide has received no press since Jan. 9 although its unveiling was on Jan. 23.
The Dartmouth did not even print an article covering business at the last Assembly meeting where the Assembly discussed the Guide, the FedEx issue and formed a new committee on pre-major advising.
Instead of relating these important developments to the community, The Dartmouth featured an article on the lives and hobbies of administrators instead. This article could have run any day, while pressing news was forgotten.
While I cannot select what articles The Dartmouth chooses to publish, I do believe The Dartmouth has a responsibility to inform students about the business and work of their elected representatives. A '96 recently told me, "You should be happy with the press [the Assembly] receives. At least, it isn't all bad."
I disagree. The Dartmouth has an excellent staff and its work is usually fair and thorough, but the Assembly also has enthusiastic, dedicated participants.
While both The Dartmouth and the Assembly work hard, only by cooperating can they enrich and serve the Dartmouth community.
Changes which are good deserve to be acknowledged. The student body deserves news, not just sensationalism.
The Assembly deserves a "fair shake."
This should start today.
