FOR CLOSE to two years, I've had the pleasure of enduring an all-too-common question - that is, why was I sacrificing the entirety of my undergraduate life for "some cruddy student newspaper?"
I used to take mild offense at the remark. Now I can laugh it off without hesitation.
No, I don't get paid. Yes, my GPA has taken a slight hit. No, I can't really guarantee the experience will land me a dream job or a ticket to an Ivy League graduate school.
Frankly, it doesn't matter. I got lucky.
Two stints on The Cavalier Daily's managing board ridded me of any notion that I simply would "go through the motions" of college: study some, party some and view my degree mostly as a credential to land employment. That isn't education, after all - it's a ritual.
I got lucky because I've long since forgotten what it felt like not to push myself when it was 2 a.m. and I was finally allowed to think about problem sets and essays instead of the newspaper. I got lucky because I've long since forgotten what it felt like not to care about what happens to and at the University.
Most of us are comfortable here. We go to a competitive public college, and one that is for the most part remarkably well-managed. Complacency is the natural result of such success, and one would think a few Student Council resolutions or Honor Committee referenda won't change much. Apathy about university issues is thus not a real problem, many would argue.
That response seems perfectly sensible. It also happens to be dead wrong. Student self-governance certainly needs no additional lip service, but it could use a few more true advocates. Every school has student government organizations, but not every school allows 18- to 22-year-olds to conduct trials and hold peers accountable for their transgressions. Not every school openly accepts a student publication that goes to print without an administrative stamp of approval.
The larger point of student self-governance is the idea that we all have a stake and a say in what is down the road for this university. That ideal is meaningless if students take the school's defining characteristics and future for granted. If students stop caring about their university, no one else will do it for them.
Students don't need a how-to guide to get involved. The formula is simple and it begins with knowing what you're talking about. That is where The Cavalier Daily comes in - with news articles, editorials and columns to start the discussion.
So learn the issues. There are plenty of problems to get riled up about, but here is my favorite. There are a slew of politicians about 70 miles away in Richmond whose lives would be much easier if the University were twice as large and 90 percent in-state. The numbers aren't that bad yet, but this is the logical extension of the General Assembly's ambitions.
Legislators are short-sighted and opportunistic, and constituents complain loudly about demanding admissions standards at Virginia public colleges. And because University students and alumni are too quiet, these people are starting to get their way.
Unless you want your future alma mater to become more similar academically to Midwestern research universities than Ivy League colleges, speak up. Raise hell. There are thousands of you - others have accomplished much greater feats with far fewer resources. But if students respond to such challenges with indifference, there is little hope things will ever get better.
I had the good fortune to publish 128 newspapers as editor-in-chief - 200 since joining the managing board as executive editor. My run in student leadership, even if only as a thoughtful critic, is now nearly complete. I will soon be an alumnus, and there are 195,000 of us living who entrust the future of this institution to the students.
Luck for me also came in the form of 150 dedicated staffers to whom I am forever indebted for putting it all on the line every night without the expectation of getting anything in return. It came in the several thousand readers a day who took the time to pick up a paper or visit our website.
In all, the most good fortune came in being able to work with two managing boards, each composed of some of the most hard-working, intelligent and accepting people I've ever met. Finding friends like these doesn't come easily.
I won't pretend I deserved all that, but hey, I'd be foolish not to take advantage of that kind of opportunity when it is sitting right in front of me, right?
That's my answer.
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