Column: Keep up with your news

The good thing about being in the news business is that you know about most things before your friends do.

The bad thing about being a millennial in the news business is that sometimes your friends just don’t care.

And this is a tragedy, really, for the both of us. I spend all my time trying to publish a newspaper that is relevant and entertaining, and there’s a chance you might still ignore it.

And for you, missing out on the day’s news could mean you don’t know about a problem soon enough to solve it.

Take the recent debate on contextualized grading. After almost a decade of work by teachers and administrators, a plan to implement contextualized grades on transcripts in the fall was put on hold.

For one thing, Chris Derickson, the university registrar, said he was worried his office wouldn’t be ready to roll out the new transcripts so soon.

But the biggest pushback came from Student Body President Andrew Powell, who said students told him they weren’t informed about the coming changes.

Readers of our newspaper would have known about the changes from stories dating back to July 2013. (We wrote stories before that, but this was the first time we gave an actual timeline for implementation at UNC.)

We had several stories run last semester letting students know the new system was on track to be implemented on fall 2014 transcripts, and this editorial board ran a lengthy — albeit a little silly — piece explaining why we were in favor of contextualized grades.

Hell, even The New York Times did a profile on Andy Perrin, the professor behind the proposed grading system, replete with lengthy explanations of what the new transcripts would look like.

So while students are completely within their rights to protest contextualized grading — and please do, because it makes for great news — I respectfully reject the idea that there wasn’t enough information circulated about the new initiative.

It’s my job to make this newspaper so relevant that you can’t help but pick it up in the mornings. And I take that job very seriously.

But as students who spend much of your time at this university preparing to be good citizens of the world, it’s your job to read your newspaper, and more than just the fun stories we write about naked people running through the halls of Carroll (but read those too, please).

There’s still one cohort that I have yet to address, and that’s the faithful readers who have followed the contextualized grading debate and many others through the pages of our newspaper.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your readership. And while I’d love for you to share this column with your friends, I’d love it even more if you shared that the Board of Governors will discuss a proposal to raise tuition today.

So please pick up a paper today. Pass it around. And stay informed.