In order to thrive, The Transcript needs students

If you’ve ever picked up a Transcript and looked at page six, you probably think that we editors have a lot of opinions. Well, we do.

We’re journalists by trade, and that comes with a whole lot of reading, writing and, most of all, listening. We’re trained to listen for every side of the story, and as we consciously do that, we sometimes take sides.

That might sound kind of bad coming from the editor of a paper, right? I mean, aren’t journalists supposed to be completely unbiased messengers? Isn’t that one of the fundamental pillars of everything we’ve been taught all these years?

Yes, it is.

But we’re also human and we have human thoughts and human feelings. We know how to check them at the door when it comes to reporting, but we can’t help but to have them. And when we have an entire opinion page to fill on top of our feelings, we use them to fill it. Feeding the beast that is The Transcript’s sixth page is an unfortunate reality of our weeks. We get editorials from non-staffers once in a blue moon, but usually we end up pulling together last-minute copy ourselves. Columns should not be last minute decisions.

The opinion page is representative of our commitment to serve students with a safe place to advocate for wants and needs and to bring awareness to various issues. To me, a paper without an opinion page isn’t doing it’s job, but us keeping it afloat internally isn’t making the cut, either.

This page of the paper is not for us. We have seven other pages we are responsible for filling. This page is for you.

We are a student newspaper in both the worst and best ways. We make a lot of rookie mistakes, but we make them because we are on our own. We are so independent that we aren’t even allowed to have a booth at the club fair. The student newspaper at any institution is intended to promote discussion on the ideas and the trends you want to hear about in the paper. We are produced by students for students, and we strive every day to represent you in an open forum.

But we can’t exactly do that if we aren’t hearing from you.

Whether it’s a piece on an adviser that did your organization wonders or a demand to see more transparency from the administration, I know you have opinions just like me and our editorial king, Noah Manskar. I don’t care if it’s a rant about how inconvenient this construction on campus is or a rave about the food court’s salad bar makeover. I just want you to write about it.

We can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell us, so tell us. Tell us in a letter to the editor, in a guest column or even by responding to us on Twitter or Facebook. Tell us what you want us to improve on or what you want the school to improve on. I know you have it in you.

As mentioned above in Noah’s editorial, OWU clearly has no problem with opinions. If you using an anonymous forum to hide behind your opinions, you’re a coward. You aren’t contributing to making OWU a better place. You’re making it worse.

Take the time to write an opinion that matters. Be brave. Be brave enough to start controversy for the greater good.

I look forward