Tower Editorial – 3/18/2016

Another week has come and gone, and the University has yet again failed to communicate with its student body.

Same story, old story; and yet, don’t you think the University would take the hint?

How many problematic incidents must occur before the University seeks a greater level of transparency?

Politicians are criticized for their secretiveness because, after all, no one likes to be kept in the dark. Especially when it’s at the hands of someone who’s supposed to be providing a public service.

Education is a public service. We’re a private university, yes, but we offer the service of education, a service that benefits the public sphere as much as it does the private. That means when you leave here, what the university has provided you with will (hopefully) allow you to make a good impact on the wider world as well as your own self.

The Washington Post article from this week recording the university’s settlement of $1 million in a case with a fired architecture professor was not mentioned to the students at all. Talking to the faculty and staff, an email went out from the Public Affairs department, but still nothing was shared with the students.

We may take St. Patty’s day as the official holiday of the student nation at CUA , but that’s no reason to paint us as immature. We can handle the news regarding a dismissed employee. And we’d like to know.

Large organizations face this sort of thing all the time; it’s why we have a legal counsel on staff. Yet, it isn’t because the students might gape at the news that we are calling for the University to share. It’s because we think the student body has a right to know.

It all comes back to the administration’s desire to curtail our right to information and our right of academic exploration. Without the proper information, how are we supposed to question or judge anything? And yes, we could have gone to another college, but we were hoping that this university would provide a place of stimulation and openness.