Achievable aims

The New Deal should focus on goals that are attainable, not far-fetched.

The results are in – Katie Barlow, Cameron Secord and Joe Chaudoin are our executive representatives of the Student Government Association for the next year.

During campaigning, the three showed their business side by presenting goals they know are feasible and goals they hope are feasible. They also showed their silly side by connecting with students and playing in the rain on Wednesday. Balance. We like it.

You know what else we like? Accountability and follow-through. The New Deal executives are already great leaders on campus and have great ideas, so we want to help. The editorial board is especially interested in four goals – two the groups says they will accomplish and two they hope to accomplish:

1. Stewardship of student activity fees

2. Changes to plus/minus and midterm policy

3. Student on the Board of Regents

4. Athletics – student voice and ticketing

Some ideas are reasonable, and some are completely far-fetched.

The New Deal executives have met with administrators and assure us the stewardship of student activity fees idea is “100 percent feasible.” Although we think controlling student fees is the only way SGA will gain true resonance on campus, we’re a bit hesitant to endorse the plan. We agree students should say where their money goes, but when the treasurer changes every year, can he or she truly have long-term insight about what is best for activity fees?

The group plans to present a policy to University Council to establish C-minus as a passing grade. They also want to ask faculty to help students better understand their class standing at the midterm withdrawal deadline. SGA has always worked well with these kinds of policies in the Educational Affairs Committee, and the goals seem realistic.

One goal the group might as well strike off its list: a student on the Board of Regents. The board, which voted for the mandatory $100 fee, has overall jurisdiction for the University System of Georgia. It’s a wonderful, idealistic goal to put a student voice on the board, but they have no reason to want us there. Even if they did, how would they choose one student from the many colleges in the state? One person from a two-year school in southern Georgia wouldn’t represent our needs, and vice versa.

Getting more student voice in the Athletic Association is also not likely. The way the University and Association are linked is tricky, and it’s hard to say how student representatives could really affect policy between them. However, small steps in the ticketing policy are admirable and should keep going.

New Deal, we’re behind your goals and want to help keep you accountable. Keep us updated.

- Carolyn Crist for the editorial board

Pitch-black planet?

Earth Hour wasn’t exactly a success in Athens – mark it down for next year.

Saturday, from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., millions of people worldwide participated in Earth Hour, an event meant to bring attention to global warming. From the Las Vegas strip to the Philippines, Earth Hour participants turned off or dimmed the lights in their homes or businesses, proclaiming their decision to “vote Earth.”

Unfortunately, Athens was figuratively left in the dark concerning the event. Throughout town and on campus, there was no discernible change in the amount of lights on.

Only one member of the editorial board observed Earth Hour on Saturday night – he turned his lights off, but left his TV on so he could watch basketball. (In his defense, the ‘Nova game was pretty intense.)

Although some people will undoubtedly criticize local Athenians for not joining in the Earth Hour celebration, we believe the promoter, the World Wide Fund for Nature, is at least partially to blame. Although the WWF allotted Earth Hour with its own Web site (www.earthhour.org) and took advantage of Facebook and Twitter, those of us who use more traditional mediums for our news fix were left unaware.

As a result, many of us “voted global warming” by virtue of being uninformed and Earth Hour, a symbolic gesture, served only to symbolize the extreme difficulty of coordinating an international event. However, we encourage University students to mark their calendars for next year’s earth hour – we certainly will.

-Marcus Crawford for the editorial board