Democracy In Action

For those of you who have checked out the link to The Opinion listed below, you probably noticed that starting last year, the newspaper had a steady stream of issues coming out almost every month as opposed to every season. This year, however, the school had a budget crisis that could have shut down the printed version of the paper altogether. Thankfully, the money we needed was provided due to democracy in action. Meaning I haven’t the slightest idea what happened.

The student board had a budget meeting planned on a Saturday in early September, meaning we forced the editor to go and refused to accompany her because we all were busy enjoying the weather. Now, from what I understand, most student organizations here get a budget of about $380 each year to pay for refreshments, streamers, confetti, hookers and crack, etc. The Opinion, on the other hand… we’re a tad more demanding. We’re kinda like greedy, snot-nosed little brats, really, but at least people can laugh at us from time to time without some bitchy mother whipping out the pepper spray to defend her child’s honor. So instead of 300-some-odd dollars, we need about $7000 to run for the year. Yep, we’re greedy, all right.

For some ungodly reason, though, there were some members of the student board who had issues. Maybe it had to do with us, maybe the snot-nosed little brats at home were acting up, I don’t know and I’m not willing to speculate. (After all, some of them might read this and I don’t want to give them more ammunition for next year.) Thus, they sent the editor an e-mail saying that our budget was in danger and we might have to limit the number of times we could print the paper or only put it up on the website or publish it using the pages of old textbooks. Yeah, like that’d get people to start reading for class… But the e-mail also mentioned that we weren’t allowed to show up at the meeting and throw our personal opinions into the mix—we were supposed to have objective data to confirm that the student body appreciated our existence. In other words, we were doomed.

Or so I assumed. It turned out that when the editor showed up at the meeting, she listened as the board went through their agenda and, once it reached The Opinion, they just gave us the money. I don’t want to say they just dropped it in our laps, but, well, you can’t tell what color my underwear is anymore.

It turned out that there were a lot of students who wrote to the board insisting that we should keep up the regular printing schedule. Wow, they love me. They really love me! Or maybe they just like reading the ads for those bar review study courses, I dunno. But once the vote came around for the student board to decide whether to give us the money, they considered that huge amount of positive objective data they received and—I think this is the “democracy in action” part—the motion passed by one vote. Sure, the constituents might think they know what they want, but they’re constituents! They’re morons! They don’t know what’s good for them! Dumbass law students…