“University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small,” goes a hoary old quote from former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Questionable as his other roles in history were, his insight into student government is well taken.
We at The Varsity like to keep as far removed from such viciousness as possible by reporting on student political scandals only when they are too egregious to ignore, or when their consequences on the student body are immediate, dire or insidious. Filling our tuition-subsidized pages with the regular stumblings and petty offenses of our student governors merely because of a slow news week does a disservice to our paper, to our audience-who will be bored, if not disgusted by the soap-opera aspect of the stories-and to the university’s political process itself.
One month ago, U of T’s student union, SAC (or UTSU, as they will officially be known in May), and union reps from Ryerson and York visited a public press conference put on by the provincial Liberals. According to SAC chairperson Jen Hassum, student governors were surprised by a Liberal lackey’s warning that all those who did not sign in as members of the media would have to leave or be charged with trespassing. Collective panic ensued. When two SAC reps were passed a clipboard showing that other student governors had signed in as press from their respective schools, they did the same, signing in as Varsity reporters. (Hassum did not, and was forced to leave.)
While student papers across the country uniformly denounced the student “reporters” as guilty of some cardinal sin, The Varsity did not report on “Sign-in-gate.” Editor-in-Chief Sarah Barmak was quoted elsewhere as saying that although signing in as a student reporter was certainly wrong, it wasn’t going to be a cause for dispute with SAC. Hassum had apologized to us and acknowledged the faux pas. In a Ubyssey editorial (which you can read on this page), we were derided for our “blasé attitude” and “indifference” on the matter.
In retrospect, we should have reported on the incident. Although SAC’s offense wasn’t terrible, they did lie, and students should know about it. But reporting is one thing-vehemently denouncing student leaders is another.
The perhaps good-natured notion that a campus newspaper can serve the common interest by publishing every misstep by a student union and thus scaring it straight is a misguided one. The reason for this is simple: student politicians are just that-students. For better or for worse, we’re all still learning the rules of the game. For us to expect perfect adroitness in every respect from student governors-the equivalent of no typos or factual errors in a paper-is unrealistic.
In the end, we asked ourselves the question: how can we best serve our readership? By decrying every mistake committed by a student leader, we flatter ourselves that the stakes of university politics are larger than they are. We become scandal-mongers and sensationalists. Average students want to read about issues relevant to their university and their world. Only student journalists and politicians want to read stories about themselves.
If campus papers really want to serve their community, they should worry more about the Liberal intimidation that caused the student unions to lose their senses in the first place-not an incorrect sign-in sheet.
