I realize that in the past two-weeks many individuals in the Undergraduate Student Government were taken aback by our coverage of SBVAC’s budget cut, the reason being that we did not speak to any officials as part of the story that was printed, “SBVAC Cringes as USG Cuts Budget.”
More recently, the opinion column by Adam Peck, “Campus Media and the USG” did make some strong, unsupported, and arguably false accusations about the relationship of USG with Campus Media.
We have received numerous letters from students on the Executive Council, many of whom were previous members of the USG Senate. To all those who have written to us regarding our coverage, let me point out that we could have done a much better job in providing the facts.
As noted by Jonathan Hirst, our USG coverage in past semesters has also lacked journalistic prowess. On several occasions the last name “Hirst” was misspelled as “Hirsch.” When referring to Romual Jean-Baptiste, on certain occasions we referred to him as the “Former USG President” when he was impeached but the USG Supreme Court did not yet decide his fate.
It seems that even now we are trying to get our coverage of USG right. For us, it shouldn’t be such a difficult task. In any situation, I can say that we always make an effort to provide the facts to the students. However, because of our tight production schedule, time does not always permit the flawless coverage we would like to provide. This is a problem that we are constantly trying to improve, our efficiency of coverage.
Regarding our SBVAC piece, I think our major point that we wanted to get across was the need for more transparency on the part of USG in its Budget Process. While the Budget Process, according to several former USG senators in their letters to us, seems to have been its most “transparent” this past spring, I think the student body needs to see more.
I hope that the current set of individuals in power at USG will use their power for the benefit of the entire 15000 students of the undergraduate campus, more so than we have seen from certain individuals in the past.