Our View: Senate elections, campus media benefit from event

Muskingum College knows media convergence. That’s just what materialized after only two weeks of planning. The B&M, along with The Society for Collegiate Journalists, joined forces with MCTV 6 and WMCO 90.7 to simulcast “Campus Candidates: Student Senate,” on Monday, April 6.

The simulcast proved successful and listeners and viewers alike should now know who they’re voting for and what issues are important to each individual candidate.

However, not all candidates chose to participate in the  program to their own disadvantage. The candidates that did partake in the free, campus media endorsed campaign iniative were at a great advantage and came prepared to discuss the issues at hand.

Overall, we were very impressed with each candidate’s level of organization, preparedness and ideas.

Michael Besl, the candidate for sophomore class president mentioned the possibility of requesting President Anne Steele to designate office hours to further open up the lines of communication between students and the president.

We believe this is a great idea, but unfortunately, we find it unrealistic. Students should be able to take their concerns to the Student Senate and in turn, the Student Senate should act as a liaison between the student body and the president. Heck, President Steele hardly has time to set up interviews with the B&M, much less meet with students on an individual basis.

Every candidate brought up the issue of wireless internet. Student body vice presidential candidate Rachel Thompson even mentioned it as an environmental issue. Whether it is an environmental issue or not, the fact is that Student Senate has been pushing for wireless internet for years and still nothing has been done about it. The administration needs to wake up and realize that in order to maintain Muskingum’s competitive collegiate environment, the campus must transition to wireless. The college has to keep up with technology, especially if it wants to someday become a university.

Senior Wayne Young, the candidate running for the position of male independent representative to Senate, brought up the issue of food quality. However, we think that the quality of dining hall food is favorable and it’s the variety of the food that’s lacking. We find eating healthy in the dining halls to be quite difficult. This may come as a surprise, considering the size of the Patton and Thomas dining halls’ salad bars, but we can’t eat a salad every day for lunch and dinner.

Finally, we were disappointed that the candidates didn’t say anything about recycling in light of recent controversial events. We were looking forward to hearing many innovative recycling program proposals.