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The way we see it…
The Arbiter is getting kicked to the curb
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We at the Arbiter have grown nervous watching crews and their heavy machinery tear down houses and trees behind the Arbiter this past week. The building the Arbiter and the Women’s Center share is in the way of progress. The space will become a parking garage. BSU serves more than 18,000 students and provides fewer than 5,000 parking spaces on campus and desperately needs a new garage.
However, this destruction leaves The Arbiter homeless! The university has promised to relocate us somewhere, but has no proposal as to where that might be.
KBSU Radio is also in the same lot, but has places to go. KBSU is the station that pumps out The Pulse (BSU Student Radio) on Sundays. The Pulse will remain in the Communications Building, the Women’s Center is lucky enough to go into the SUB expansion and The Arbiter gets kicked to the curb.
As the voice of students on campus, The Arbiter is in its 73rd year of operation. Imagine silencing that voice with a demolition crew. The Arbiter is a teaching tool, used by students to get real-life experience in journalistic fields. It is a haven for writers, photographers, designers, political science, engineering and marketing majors, and those whom often get told their voice does not matter to the mainstream public. We let those voices be heard. We tell stories about you. We deliver our message loud and clear and we fear that without proper planning we may have to move off campus to do our work.
The Arbiter is paradise. It is a Pacemaker winner. That ranks The Arbiter among the 25-best college
newspapers in the country. It does things with online publications and media forums that make it more than just a college paper. The Arbiter is an institution of free speech within an institution of higher learning. According to BSU’s Master Plan, its drive toward
becoming a Metropolitan Research University of Distinction, the Arbiter is obsolete. It is tearing down our paradise to put in a parking lot.
The Arbiter asked for space in the Student Union Building expansion. That space was denied due to cost. It seems as if the paper is getting the cold shoulder from BSU. The garage is slated for completion in Fall 2007. So where do we go? This university needs a newspaper. It exists as the final check in the balance of policy, entertainment and events on campus. We teach, mentor, inform, discuss, unearth and criticize the world we know.
Here’s a solution: build us a building.
Call it the external communications complex, with student radio and the student paper. We should be in cahoots anyway. We’d love to share equipment and ideas, staff and space as we merge into the traffic of the electronic information superhighway.
Most of the current Arbiter staff will be gone in five years. Our responsibility is to the 18-year-old freshman news writer who may be the editor-in-chief in 2011. If we fail to secure a new home for the Arbiter, we will have failed the students of this university. Their education will be less than what they deserve. You can have the best professors, classroom discussions, best research in the world, but if you don’t give your students an insured voice, then you are disabling their right to free speech.
We say damn the plan, save the Arbiter.
The way we see it is based on the majority opinions of The Arbiter editorial board. Members of the board are Drew Mayes, editor-in-chief; Marcus Hackler, business manager; Heather English, production manager; Dustin Lapray, managing editor; Brandon Stoker, opinion editor; and Hadley Rush, multimedia producer.
Arbiter Editorial Board