Here’s the truth: It was a struggle to write this column. I usually spend more time writing papers than being engaged the in community, keeping me barely informed on current events. After poring through news log after news log, though, I had to come to this conclusion, which was aided by months of mounting suspicions:
MSU students don’t have very much to worry about in their day-to-day lives.
This might be a pretty controversial statement, but it’s not supposed to marginalize. Bozeman has its fair share of homelessness, drug use and other social problems and, as a college town, is diverse in comparison to the rest of Montana.
Local problems seem inconsequential, though, when compared to national current events. At MSU, the most pressing issues deal with sports stadium expansion, or the fact that only one person is running for ASMSU president this year. These things are admittedly important in certain contexts and shouldn’t be ignored.
At the same time, Bozeman doesn’t exactly have a skid row to worry about. There is no rampant drug epidemic ravaging students. Remember when there was a random assault on campus last semester? The fact that there has been no resulting panic or culture change speaks volumes about the sense of security that most MSU students have about their surroundings.
Meanwhile, a Republican-backed Montana Legislature is tooling around with federal authority, a topic in which most students, including this author, are not especially well-versed. Meanwhile, federal powers raid state-approved marijuana businesses. Meanwhile, Wisconsin struggles with the expulsion of collective bargaining rights, an event that will cause ripples throughout the rest of the country (and is something that all education majors should be aware of).
It’s enough to make the weekly local news and the concerns aired in this section seem piddling and self-indulgent.
There’s a fair amount of showbiz management that occurs when planning the weekly opinion section. Instead of focusing on news analytically, which can get dry and repetitive, writers are encouraged to cover subjects that represent a wide subject base and rotate writing coverage so as to remain fresh and relevant.
Even then, readers can’t exactly be blamed when the section is accused of embodying self-interest. Not everyone should be expected to care about what Pat Hessman has to say about cowboys, or why coffee shops close at the time they do.
But when nothing of dire and critical importance happens at MSU or in Bozeman in particular, there’s not much else to turn to than what the writer feels is interesting.
The idea is that the Exponent does not construct but complements the individual student’s worldview. If the newspaper is expected to be the sole guiding force for student life, then of course the Exponent is doing a poor job. The thing is that this paper, like all papers, is just another portal to information that the student can utilize to inform their decisions.
Perhaps Bozeman’s troubles are relatively insignificant. That does not excuse the student from finding something larger to become involved with.
