I'm listening, all summer long

By: Jason Staggs

Posted: 6/1/09

My fellow Aggies:

Howdy! My name is Jason Staggs, and I am a senior pre-law history major from Evadale, Texas. But, more importantly, I am the loudest, proudest member of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of 2010. A-Whoop! This summer, I will have the pleasure and responsibility of serving the student body as Voices editor at The Battalion.

In my application and interview for this job, I suggested that the name of this page be changed back to opinion, since that is the trade we are in, and this business about voices wasn't fooling anyone.

I will talk more about the opinion side of things later, but for now I think it is important to share what I have come to realize since being hired: this paper is the voice of the student body. The reason we exist is to serve students by providing news and commentary on issues and topics important to you, whoever you are, wherever you are from, whatever you think about whatever we are writing about.

Even before being hired, I sensed that students' voices cannot be spoken most accurately by regular, paid columnists. Columnists' willingness to commit to filling at least one slot on a blank page every week is essential to the functioning of this page, of course, and the time they commit to researching and developing their arguments is and always will be laudable.

Their contributions to this paper inform and excite thousands of you every week, but something even more…I hesitate to say 'democratic'…is needed, if we are to go on claiming to be the 'voices' page.

That is why my most intensely worked-upon goal over the course of this summer is going to be to encourage students to submit guest columns and mail call. If some issue strikes you as urgent and in dire need of a voice, be that voice. You don't have to be in the paid opinion stable to have your voice heard. The way for this page to be more representative of Aggieland's students is by playing host to more opinions from more people.

Over the course of the past semester, my predecessor Kenny Ryan, co-worker Kat Drinkwater and I strove to place as many student voices on the page as we responsibly could, and I intend to build on what we learned and make it into something even better.

In the spring we received several submissions every week for guest columns, and after we took down online comments the number of mail calls spiked. This allowed us to put more of you on your voices page. To continue this and expand on it, we will need more submissions. There is a caveat: I will not publish anything that I would be ashamed to submit to a professor for a grade, whether it is written by a paid columnist or by any other student. So, I challenge my fellow Aggies to submit your thoughtful and cleanly articulated comments on the issues confronting us.

Furthermore, as I mentioned above, there are still regular opinion matters to be taken care of. I am pleased to say that Tracey Wallace, Steve Humeniuk and Kat Drinkwater are here to stay for the summer, and you will be hearing from them regularly. Christen Beck and Ian McPhail will be contributing as the opportunity arises. So, never fear, the old faithfuls are still alive and will be kicking all summer long.

As the countdown clock in the Memorial Student Center draws closer to zero and students are parceled off to different corners around campus, we will all be responsible for staying as engaged with people outside our comfort zone as ever.

For the sake of future Aggies, some of whom might never be able to share our physical living room, we owe it to each other to continue the discussions important to all of us.

It was an eye-opening experience to learn that I would be confronting a blank page, one-sixth of the daily paper, almost every day for the next two months. With your help, I hope to use this opportunity to bring out the best in my fellow students' opinions, to show everyone that here in College Station we think rationally, feel passionately and argue responsibly.