Editorial Board claims about ASMSU blog faulty

As a representative of ASMSU and the primary sponsor and creator of the “blog bill,” I felt it was my responsibility to respond to the editorial published Monday.

Let me be the first to acknowledge The State News for its somewhat appropriate criticism of ASMSU and its less than satisfactory technological communication ability. However, there are a few points made in the article that I would like to debunk in order to give students a better picture of what the blog is meant to accomplish.

First: that two semesters is too long for the organization to implement the blog idea. There is no question that a standard blog can be operational in roughly 30 seconds, but what ASMSU has planned is no “standard blog.”

Instead, the idea is something akin to miniature Web pages that both representatives and certain departments will have in order to facilitate a stronger communication link between students and the organization as a whole. Voting records, discussion forums, online polls and posting of related bills all are part of the encompassing blog idea. Not to mention finding the time for three major departments within the organization to sit down and discuss content and layout plans. Certainly not something we can hope to create in 30 seconds.

Next: that the organization should be spending its time updating online programs already created. Although I have no argument against the poor state of our Web site or our Facebook page, I think it is important to recognize that the blog helps alleviate those issues. Since the blog will be directly tied to the current Web site under “contact” information, we hope that this increase in traffic to the Web site will lead to a greater incentive for the organization to update these avenues of communication in order to better serve students.

The blog is merely the first step in a series of changes the organization plans on making in order to communicate with students easier through technology.

In the end, I hope students recognize what ASMSU is attempting to accomplish through this bill.

Do we know for certain that this will work? No. However, other avenues of communication have failed due to lack of student interest and poor upkeep.

This blog will leave the representatives in charge of level of upkeep and content. This hopefully will allow us to better hold student interest and serve the student body better than we have in the past.

We wish students would come to our meetings, or read the paper to see what legislation we champion on a regular basis, but life gets in the way, and reading about the latest scandal within the organization certainly is much more entertaining than any legislation we could ever pass.

I, for one, am not immune to recent polling that shows a majority of the student body feels that we are doing a poor job as an organization, and I will attempt every possible avenue to change that image and get students more involved.

Michael Lipphardt

Economics and public administration and public policy junior and Academic Assembly representative for the College of Social Sciences