Letter to the editor

Viewpoints section disappoints

When the Student Voice comes out, it’s obvious. Peering into classrooms, you’ll find dozens of heads are buried between the wide, crinkly pages, and for a generation that’s used to getting information from a glowing screen, I’d say the Student Voice is widely read. Personally, I like to scan the first page for shocking news then hurry my way over to the Viewpoints section.

I guess what I’m looking for when I turn to this page is educated individuals expressing their opinion on an issue that’s important to them, and hopefully to myself as well.

I expect the articles to be well thought-out, professional, and the writers’ perspectives to be accurately represented. Why does it seem like we rarely get them?

Many columns are just rants with no clear point, condemning other people or points-of-view with little or no logical reasoning to back their opinions.

Not only that, but I don’t know how many times I’ve been reading an article and come across ridiculous spelling errors or sentences that don’t make sense. The Student Voice reserves the right to edit any material it publishes; they just don’t seem to be doing it.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of writers on the Student Voice staff whose articles I really enjoy, but the fact that the Student Voice has writers that actually can professionally and clearly discuss topics seems only to amplify the inadequacies of the articles that can’t.

In this past week’s Student Voice column “College Democrats need fewer ‘Democrats,’ more intelligence,” guest columnist Mike Pearson “argued” that the College Democrats on campus have been unprofessionally representing the Democratic Party.

Instead of describing why he feels their anti-war protests will not reach this generation of student voters, or that their radical ideals are driving away voters, he resorted to name-calling and generalizations, calling them unintelligent, clove cigarette smoking extremists who should be banned from all campus-wide debates.

What I think Mr. Pearson was trying to get at was that if you can’t professionally represent your political party, it would be better if you didn’t speak at all. Perhaps he should have taken his own advice before alienating an entire organization that shares many of his political goals, and rambling on about Chris Farley for half the article.

Maybe it’s the internet that makes us write this way, ideas flying so quickly there’s hardly time to think before you write.

But this isn’t the internet, people. This is a newspaper. Maybe we can get away with rambling, swearing and picking on others in ALL CAPS on blogs or message boards, but not here.

What’s really sad is that these articles represent our college, our students and our faculty as a whole. When your opinions are made public, they represent you, your school and your peers. Being unable to spell or write a rational article about important issues is not something our generation needs to be associated with. We’ve got enough on our hands as it is.

Chelsea Huppert, Student