EDITORIAL

We can start the fire

Over the course of the school year, students have proven tliat accomplishments can be made when they set their minds and energies toward them. Just this past weekend, students successfully organized a seminar and a benefit concert·dealing with children killing children.

Other impressive achievements this year include the creation of a new anti-cheating policy by the Student Academic Counsel; the return to an outdoor graduation thanks in large part to the efforts of the senior class officers; the women's basketball, men's soccer and both the men's and women's cross country teams capturing PAC titles; the improv troupe, Cavalier Attitudes, traveling to Skidmore College for a national comedy festival; an extremely productive Search retreat and trip to Appalachia took place with the students involved with Campus Ministry; and the esteemed privilege of psychology students and honor students presenting their papers to significant audiences.

All the students involved with these respectable accomplishments as well as the many others that students have executed deserve to be highly commended and demonstrate fully that students have the abilities to make things happen. Taking this fact into consideration, there is still a large amount of unresolved business that students need to use their voice and power to settle.

The problems students have had with tuition, residential life and graduation this year will not magically disappear next year. Tuition will again rise, students will not receive housing and the location of graduation will not please everyone. However, if students seize and utilize the voice they have before these situations come to the surface, they have the power to change things.

We need to demand of ourselves and of our Student Government Association to take a more active role in getting what we want before we are handed down what we do not want by the administration. Tuition discussions begin midway through the first semester of each year, although we are not informed of the changes until half of the second semester is over. Students need to organize themselves and the SGA to take part in these initial discussions. By doing something as simple as this, students will be taking a proactive stance against the administration rather than a reactive one, which never accomplishes anything.