A few weeks ago, I was at a Portland bar talking about The Free Press with an intoxicated employee of another local publication.
He told me his paper doesn’t view The Free Press as a competitor. “We’re not worried you’re going to get an ad account we aren’t,” he said. “We’re not worried you’re going to break a story before us. And if you do, it doesn’t really matter.”
I was sort of insulted, but I also saw where he was coming from: in the grand scheme of things, our paper is small potatoes. While we often break stories before other local papers, the impact of those stories outside the university is negligible – we print 3,000 copies a week and get roughly 20,000 web hits a month.
For many student leaders at USM, their jobs can seem extraordinarily important. The student government manages more than $325,000 in student activity fees, and is fraught with the same Machiavellian alliances as any other governing body. And here at The Free Press, the microcosm that is USM can seem like its own world. We cover the daily goings-on of the university with the same intensity that national papers cover Congress.
But the reality is that college is designed to be a sandbox for real life, and as much as I strive to make the Free Press a paper that people outside the university trust, I am fully aware that we are – in many people’s eyes – kids playing dress-up. And the student senate, when all is said and done, really has no power except to dole out money to student groups. The administration knows this, and at times, looks at the senate in the same way real papers look at The Free Press.
For years, I assumed most student senators were nerds on a power trip, or highly motivated political science majors looking to pad their resumes. But this year something changed. This year, the student government took a stand and truly fought to have the concerns of students counted during the restructuring process. They asked questions of the administration and demanded a say in how the university is run. They staged a protest that may have saved a professor’s job. They held forums to educate students about the changes taking place at USM. They took risks. And whether or not it made a difference, people noticed, and the administration started to take student government a little more seriously.
I hope that the incoming student senate and student body president will have the tenacity of their predecessors and continue to ask the hard questions of USM’s administration. While neither the senate nor The Free Press may matter to “the real world,” what we do matters a lot here at USM.
So for the rest of my time as editor, I intend to run this paper like I don’t know any better and act like we do matters on a larger scale. I encourage the senate to do the same, because ultimately, that’s exactly what it takes to make a difference.