Vis Lupi Est Grex: Be Informed? We couldn't agree more.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Be Informed? We couldn't agree more.

"Be Informed on Joint Vision 2017," is the word making its way around facebook. Mostly it's people affiliated with ASUN who are spreading the word. For as important as they think it is for the public of ASUN to be informed, it doesn't matter nearly as much as those who will actually have a vote: the senators on University Affairs first, then perhaps the full Senate, should the proposal not die in committee. But we couldn't agree more. The senators need to be informed, but not just about this plan.

Also, let's be fully honest here. Saying that the Joint Vision 2017 document is "a proposal for what the Association would like to see happen by the year 2017" is just a flatout falsehood. More accurately, it's a proposal that ASUN President Eli Reilly has signed on to that reflects what the University administration, particularly those under Shannon Ellis in Student Services, wants to see happen. Does this plan really serve the students' interests? $1.125 million for a "Student Activities department," which is essentially a bureaucratic duplication of ASUN in the first place? Yeah, sounds like tons of value to the average student just trying to get through college to meet that oh-so-awesome job market that waits beyond.

This plan is wide, complicated, and has many implications, most of which I would guess the senators haven't even begun to conceive. Being informed is great. But being afraid at this point is probably far more useful. The senators are no doubt smarter than the average person (they are in a university, aren't they?), but right now they need to be humbled by the fact that what they don't know, and not knowing it (to borrow from the poetry of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), is dangerous for not only themselves, but for those they represent.

I like it better how Thoreau put it in Walden: "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." Those who have vested interests in this plan being adopted will stop at nothing to make sure the senators who have the votes never come to know what it is they don't know. We hope to provide a healthy dose of enlightenment and perspective. We don't know everything, but we do know enough to know this plan is another power grab from what is rightfully ASUN's. Okay, enough being philosophical. It gives me a headache.