This past Thursday’s Cavalier Daily was devoted to the current University elections. As has been true before, the special issue, especially the print version, shows much of the best of The Cavalier Daily; from the Focus piece on the University Board of Elections to the various news articles there were examples of good and informative reporting. The Opinion pieces offered arguments I expect helped interested students decide how they want to vote and I’d hope moved some who wouldn’t have otherwise to take the time to vote.
The distinction between the print and digital formats was really highlighted with this issue. The print issue was easily navigated and the graphics showing how various parts of student government function were interesting. The problem I ran into is that I couldn’t locate most of them online. The checklist of positions for the various candidates for the Honor Committee looked to be informative and that was good in print and even better online as it was sortable by candidate or by question, but it was buried at the bottom of an associated article. The sortable spreadsheet is a great use of the platform; I wish it had been highlighted. The rest of the digital portion of the special issue suffered from having the main elections content pushed from the tops of the homepage and the news page by new, unrelated stories published on Friday online. Since the elections began on Friday, it would have been helpful for the articles explaining candidate positions and various referenda to have remained highlighted somehow.
One thing that struck me was a comment on a news piece about uncontested races. A person who identifies as a graduate student in the Batten School wrote that the first they had learned of the existence of positions for which they could run was the email telling them to vote. This person didn’t know what the University Judiciary Committee was to begin with much less that a Batten School graduate student could run for a position on the UJC. It highlights a place The Cavalier Daily can and should work to provide more and better information. Following on the managing board’s expressed desire to encourage action in our community through their work in both news and opinion, The Cavalier Daily could target some articles specifically to students and others who are new to the University but not incoming first-years. Especially for graduates and transfer students, the University model of student self-governance may be very different than the set-up at their previous schools. It is important for The Cavalier Daily to consider such students in its coverage and include enough background for readers to be able to make sense of newly reported information. The fabric of a single sanction honor system and multi-sanction judiciary system might quickly become the norm for students entering as first-years but for others it seems much of this information can become lost.
I’ve noted in the past that the salary index, housing and budget features that are permanently linked at the top of each page of The Cavalier Daily website are some of the best work The Cavalier Daily has produced. It seems like a similar sort of permanent feature (perhaps based on the explainer graphics in last Thursday’s print edition) would be helpful for those new to all of the various elected bodies and other parts of student government at the University.
Christopher Broom is the Public Editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at publiceditor@cavalierdaily.com or on Twitter at @CDpubliceditor.
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