Blogging is pretty common in the world today. People everywhere create blogs to spread messages and express ideas. They can be easily updated throughout the day and can be made in as little as 10 minutes.
However, there are those special groups that defy the typical world of information on-demand and instantaneous communication.
MSU’s undergraduate student government, ASMSU, has decided to create a blog for students to follow. This decision came about in September, and it has said it will be up and running by the middle of next semester.
Yes, it will take two school semesters in order to implement this grand idea. It’s a blog. It’s not rocket science.
Understandably, there are protocols that must be followed, such as creating and passing a bill authorizing the creation of the blog. However, something as commonplace as a blog shouldn’t take more than two full semesters to create by a large organization.
Why would it take more than two good meetings discussing content and layout to implement it?
As of now, these items still are up for discussion. ASMSU has discussed creating forums and profiling each representative.
We think it’s great that ASMSU wants to be more available to students and wants to provide an outlet for representatives to communicate to the public. A student government should reach out to those being represented — but why a blog?
The Internet has been around for quite a while now. It’s not as though ASMSU didn’t have the capacity to reach out before.
People have invented special communication programs such as Facebook and Twitter in order to network. Yes, ASMSU has a Web site — an outdated one. Yes, it has a Facebook group — its last wall post was from February. The last discussion was in 2006.
If it isn’t updating programs it already created, what will make this blog a success?
It seems odd such a large-scale operation cannot manage simple tasks such as updating a Facebook status or even the Web site where most students probably obtain a majority of their information. Now, ASMSU wants to create something even less accessible.
In this day and age, messages and status updates are sent to BlackBerrys and iPhones. People have the mobile Web, which makes it easy for students to check popular sites.
It doesn’t seem plausible for students go out of their way to visit the ASMSU blog when more convenient methods are underutilized. Also, ASMSU needs to ensure the public the blog will be more than a glorified ledger.
If people want to know what happens at meetings, they can pick up a newspaper or go to the meeting itself. A blog should supplement what students already know. It should add value or apply specifically to programs students want to investigate, not exist for no concrete purpose.
Maybe ASMSU should take a look at revamping options that already exist instead of wasting man power on something that most likely will benefit only a few people.
It’s not a hard concept to keep people in the loop — it just requires a bit of commitment on their part.
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