To the editor:

As a student at Binghamton University, I have been extremely disappointed in Pipe Dream’s recent coverage of the Student Association’s Executive Board Election.

Pipe Dream, a chartered organization of the Student Association, claimed to “have a similar mission [to the SA] — to give a voice to the students on this campus.” Yet time and time again, you have proven that your goal is only to give yourselves a larger voice on campus.

You listed your endorsements on the same page as your “objective” summaries of the candidates. Your summaries are so terse it is as though you copied and pasted from the candidates’ Facebook pages, and is so unspecific and sparse it seems as though you made no effort to interview the candidates. Additionally, your most recent issue before the election made not a single reference to the three very important ballot questions that students will be voting on during the elections.

Pipe Dream’s overall coverage about the election and the SA in general has been significantly lacking. Pipe Dream often sends no reporters to cover Assembly meetings and when they do the articles they write are rarely about the main substance of the debate. Yes, the Assembly has not been the most active or controversial this year, but with some more publicity, SA Reps would have incentives to try to make a difference.

You claim that you want a more informed and engaged student body — now is your time to prove it. Write profiles about the candidates, write about what the SA does and how it affects students, write about campaign tactics, write about what the candidates hope to achieve and the challenges they will face. Next time, instead of complaining about how uninformed students are, I sincerely hope that you take a step in the right direction and try to inform them.

Andrew Topal
Assembly Representative
Financial Economics and Political Science
Class of 2014