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03 May 2002
uwstudent.org |
It's communication, stupidFeds' student relations and communicationIn 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote to Edward Carrington, who was at the time his representative at the Continental Congress, the legislature of the 13 colonies. In his letter he said, "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Jefferson clearly identified that in order for a democracy to operate properly, the people must be informed. It is reasonable to treat Jefferson's use of newspapers as media since at the time they were the most effective medium to communicate with the population. Communication between the Federation of Students and its members, students, is in a sorry state and this must change. One of the most important things the Feds can do this year is to communicate with students using the media available to them, including their Web site. The Feds' values include accountability through transparency, political protection through information-sharing and the utilization of all communication resources available. Although these three things are stated as part of the 10 values of the organization they are not reflected by reality. Their information is not easily available. At UW, students get most of their news about their student government not from the Federation of Students but from the student media. On March 26, the Feds presented awards to 10 students leaders and it was not published by Feds; the only major news source that publicized the awards was uwstudent.org. Also, on May 1 at the fifteen-day deadline for notice of the May 16 Feds general meeting, notice appeared on uws and not feds.ca. Last year uws provided 28,107 words in 63 news stories that involved Feds and Imprint provided 28,610 in 42 stories; the Feds do not regularly publish news and the amount of content they provide is not significant. All kinds of reporting are unavoidably biased and it hurts the Feds to have students receive most of their information on Feds through the filter of bias and understanding of Imprint and uws reporters. It is a disservice to students and to themselves to be restricting the flow of information to students. At the March 13 general meeting, Dawn Phillips, VP admin & finance at the time, stated that the Feds Web site was underdeveloped and underused. On April 1, they launched a new design for feds.ca (the domain registered for Feds by Rob Schmidt who was not even a member at the time). The changes to the Web site are improvements but they do not fully answer the question of communication; it is a fine tool but of little value if important content is not delivered. Further, although the stated intent is to provide information and archive content, this was not demonstrated as information from the old site is no longer offered. So information that is provided on the site must be archived, id est continue to be provided so as to avoid the Orwellian rewriting and obscuring of history, attempts of which we saw during the Watpaign referendum when copies of the proposal were changed and deleted from the Web site. All information that is currently generated must be offered, which is easy as it is all currently recorded electronically. This information includes executive reports, minutes of meetings, press releases and official documents. Information on student issues must be given to students so that they understand the situation and decisions their representatives deal with. These things will affect many other aspects of the Feds and how students interact with and perceive the organization. Students at UW are not apathetic, although they may not care about the Feds. Students cannot care about what they do not know about; students don't know about the Feds, but the Feds can change this. "Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them." -- Thomas Jefferson 1787 |