Students who actually pay attention to campus happenings are hard to come by. At USF St. Petersburg, there are three kinds of students — those who care, those who don’t and those who go on novel-length Facebook rants complaining about something that did or didn’t happen when it’s already way too late to make a difference.
If you’re a Type 1, that’s great. Come by The Crow’s Nest office in the Student Life Center and we’ll have a chat about how to make our school a better place. If you’re a Type 2, that’s great too. Keep doin’ what you do and make good grades.
Please don’t be a Type 3. Get angry, take a stand, pick a fight, start a riot but don’t attempt to do so from behind your computer screen. Be proactive. Don’t wait until it’s too late to make a difference. If you don’t want Student Government to use your Activity and Service fees on a $37,000 fish tank or a $10,000 anatomically correct bronze bull statue, find a representative and tell them how you feel. Taking to social media after the fish tank has been installed and filled with sea life and the bull’s manhood has been firmly established on the lawn will get you nowhere.
Don’t just assume Campus PD’s fancy new off-road golf cart was purchased with your tuition money and take to Facebook complaining about it. I can guarantee you that’s not where your tuition money is going. It’s natural to question where the thousands of dollars you’re pouring into this university are being spent; however, if you think you’re going to get a straight answer from a bunch of kids on the USFSP Know it All’s Guide (which, admittedly, can be a useful source in some cases), you’re kidding yourself.
So, it isn’t necessarily what the Type 3s say that irks me — it’s the approach they take in saying it.
If you want to know where your money is going, ask. Not on Facebook or Twitter, but in person. Informing yourself is not as hard as you may think. Student Government assemblies are always open to the student body. They usually happen on Wednesday afternoons in the University Student Center. Go and listen to what your representatives are talking about. If you can’t make the meetings, read the minutes on Orgsync. What’s next on the agenda? What bills is senate voting on? What are buying and how much is costing?
These people are here to make decisions for your benefit and if you take the time to work with them, they’ll try their best to make you happy. They want to answer your questions and if they can’t provide you with an answer, they’ll find someone who can. Get to know your senators. Introduce yourself to Mark Lombardi-Nelson, your student body president. Buy him a cup of coffee at the Grind and pick his brain.
Coming the your student-run campus newspaper is another feasible option for both getting answers and making yourself heard. Give us something to report. Let us tell your story. If you have an opinion to voice, write an opinion column and we’ll publish it. If you want to contribute to the ever-rewarding process of gathering and spreading information throughout campus, come write for us as a contributor. We’ll welcome you warmly.
And if you don’t want to contribute, at least read the paper every week. You’re doing a good job so far. We exist for you, not the university system. A lot of news comes through our door and we want to share it with you.
In my two years at USFSP, I’ve seen too many Type 3s. These are people who clearly have strong opinions, and some of them are valid enough to actually make a significant difference here. The Type 3s want to be heard. They may be taking the easy route by typing out their feelings on a keyboard, but as they type away into the wee hours of the night, I know they’re doing so with passion and reason.
So, Type 3s, I challenge you to take your anger, frustration, confusion, bitterness or whatever else and invest it in a more proactive technique. Things generally pass through SG in stages. If a bill makes it all the way, it most likely took a decent amount of time to get there. Use this time to your advantage, because once the votes are cast, you’ve likely lost the battle. And no matter how much you tweet about it, the fight will be infinitely harder than it would have been had you acted proactively from the beginning.
