TO THE EDITOR:
“Ah ... Welcome back to February,” starts Monday’s editorial. February, the month where The Daily Tar Heel pleads for student body president candidates to focus on policies, yet declines to substantively discuss their policies. The month where the DTH minimizes the importance of the SBP race, yet still criticizes candidates for “disengaging” with campus issues. It happens every year, but this year’s effort is exceptional in its hypocrisy.
Few, if any, SBPs in recent history have entered “real” government upon graduating, perhaps because their experience as SBP was all too real. All recent SBPs have indeed understood that the position is inherently political, and for precisely that reason they have often avoided voicing politically destructive opinions.
I don’t mean to say that SBPs should never voice controversial opinions. They should, and they should probably do so more often. I hope they do so in an attempt to better advocate for student priorities, both on the Board of Trustees and in their “supposed” meetings with administrators, rather than to save this disinterested editorial board from the cruel fate of boredom.
The DTH should do more to engage students, instead of blaming the student body when they fail to print their own paper due to internal mismanagement. This would mean substantively evaluating SBP candidates’ platforms, holding major campus institutions accountable year round and allowing DTH staff to hold lower-level positions in student government and sign ballot petitions.
Harry Edwards
Chief of Staff
Executive Branch of Student Government
