As with any revolutionary invention, we are living in a time of cultural flux. The internet is so new that frankly, we don’t have a clue what to do with it. Certainly we understand some of the things we can use it for, but culturally, at least, we are frequently unaware of the ways that it has reshaped who we are.

This issue is not meant to advocate that we all become Borg or androids, nor is it meant to advocate that we become isolationist Luddites. These are informative, speculative, and opinion pieces, all rolled into one (we’ve not yet followed categorical journalism rules; why should we start now?). Most importantly, they are meant to elicit a response—a dialogue.

The “Madison Johnson Incident” is wholly indicative of why we so desperately need this sort of dialogue. People claim that the whole thing was unethical, that it crossed lines of privacy and decency, but quite honestly, our internet culture is not so stringently defined. Precisely because of this ambiguity, we need to discuss. We need to explore what the internet does, how it changes who we are.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this whole phenomenon is that we can symbiotically define the ways that the internet defines us, even as it does so. We have the power to shape our culture, to decide what is appropriate and what is not, what is proper internet etiquette, how things change and why, and ultimately, who we are.

It is arguable that humans use technology as our own microevolutionary mechanism (For the record, this is not advocating either side of the Creation v. Evolution debate; we are simply saying that we use it to progress. Calm down.). Clothes have become an extension of our skin, swords and guns extensions of our teeth and nails, writing an extension of our mouths and ears—and now, the internet an extension of our minds. We, the intellectuals and academics of our generation, hold the power and responsibility to make certain that this is a change for the better.

Let the discussion begin.

Now, the person who finds the latest internet meme is like the cool kid in elementary school who was the first to get the shoes that lit up when they walked (remember those?).  Finding memes on the internet is like finding hidden jewels.  They are so time sensitive that by the time you find out about an internet meme and send it to a friend, it becomes so five minutes ago.  And right when you think the internet cannot possibly top the last meme, they come out with more.  Not only are they time sensitive, there is absolutely no logic to them at all.  Due to the temporary fleeting quality of memes and their illogical nature, there is an artificial sense of exclusivity and value that makes them so great.  By the time you find out about an internet meme and send it to a friend, it becomes so five minutes ago.  Then, right when you think the internet cannot possibly top the last meme, they come out with more.

To keep up with memes, you have to be a part of a community that puts value into it.  Whether you’re huddling around a computer with friends or checking out a forum alone, there is always a sense of connection that occurs in sharing the experience of an internet meme.  You know there are people who have decided to like the same things as you, just cause, and that they are “in.”  Obviously, these people “get it.”  The memes would not be as funny on their own.  There always has to be a unified community that appreciates it together.  We make each other mean.  The meme gives us community, and the community gives meaning to memes.  I love walking around and hearing strangers make random references to memes because it establishes an automatic connection and makes me realize that we’re all a part of something really big called the wonderful world of teh internetz.

Internet memes are absurd, and it’s virtually (hehe) impossible to understand why we like them.  They make you sit there and say, “I don’t know wtf this is, but it’s magic and I think like it.”  Even Freud wouldn’t be able to explain the mystery of memes in terms of what they reveal about the human unconscious.  They are one of the few things make you feel extreme confusion, curiosity, concern, and wonder, all at the same time.  Things like Tom Selleck and giant sandwiches photo shopped into pictures of waterfalls make my brain exclaim, “Why?” and “YES!” at the same time.  I don’t know how or why peopleofwalmart.com make me laugh so hard, or how a three minute epic beard man video clip can end up eating 30 minutes of my day.  What is it about seeing a surprised looking owl with the caption “O RLY?” that makes the picture so perfect and appropriate?  No matter how long I analyze these things, I can’t figure out what they mean, or why I like them.  They simply are amazing.  But what is a meme, exactly?  Here is the closest I’ve come to defining it: omg + lol + wtf + yay = meme.

Now you’re with me, Dear Reader (it was a cruel narrative device, yes, but I regret it not one bit).  But who, indeed, is Madison Johnson?  Is she, in fact, less real than the rest of us on Facebook?

I am being a bit philosophical, here, but the Madison question is the essence of an article that was in the making even before the whole incident.  It is, in part, a question of the theoretical, a question of self-construction and culture, but unlike most of the philosophy that I do, it has direct, pragmatic effects on all of us.

Take “me,” for example.  I friend you on Facebook.  You may have seen me doing something for C2, or you at least know my name, so you accept.  What, now, do you know about “me”?  You know I am in Angwin, I’m from Redding, I’m 21 (after some math), engaged to Ariane Gregory, a socialist, and think that I’m amusing as far as religious views go.  I obviously have an obsession with poetry, and some sort of issue that compels me to declare an excessive amount of majors.  My stati tend to be snarky witticisms.  That’s me.

But is it?  There’s no law that says what I put on Facebook has to be empirically “true.”  My sister and one of my friends arbitrarily changed their stati to say that they were engaged to one another; both of them set off chain reactions of excited—and then rather irritated—friends and relatives.  People declare siblings at random.  I got incredibly excited that one of my friends was into Hitchhiker’s Guide, only to find out that it was in fact a different friend who had stolen her laptop and commented on one of my comments.

Moreover, we are defined by the medium.  The way we construct our digital selves depends entirely on the programming decisions of sun-starved computer techies who are far wealthier than any of us.  You know I’m a socialist because Facebook decided to include political views, and make them customizable.  We hold a “conversation” on Facebook via stati-and-comments, and every exchange is mediated by the medium of stati-and-comments.

The “Like” button is the epitome of this phenomenon.  Do any of us really know what it means to “Like” something?  Several of my friends immediately “Like” any of their own comments; others use it sarcastically; others seem to “Like” just about anything they read.  And yet, because of programming decisions, to “Like” something is an integral part of our interactions with one another.

Medium as controller goes beyond Facebook (yes, there are things beyond Facebook, I hear).  Twitter, for example: because of arbitrary decisions, one has one-hundred forty characters to construct a self.  A program called “DigitalLife” allows one to create an entire digital persona, down to physical appearance; many corporations use this program for meetings, to the point that there are corporate task-forces composed of people who have worked together for years, but never seen one another in person.  All the interactions that those people have, have been and will continue to be defined by programming decisions at DigitalLife.  Don’t even get me started on WoW.

We use digital selves to interact in other-constructed mediums, and thereby, our digital selves are not really “our” selves at all.  Our internet selves, though they do embody in part an extension of ourselves, are not our own constructions—but they are, to the fullest extent, constructions.

Forums, or gaming personae, demonstrate the façade of digital self.  For a year or so, I was a member of a martial arts forum, until internal forum politics got me banned; I created a new login, new persona, new self, and rejoined.  Very few people are terribly friendly when gaming online, particularly since, from what I can gather, the point seems to be killing one another, repeatedly.  The person who just put a hole through your character’s head, then messaged you, “u sux n00b,” may in fact be one of your closest “friends” in a forum, or on Facebook.  Identity is inconsistent, to say the least.  These interactions are essentially anonymous, even with names attached.

This relative anonymity is, in my opinion, the ugliest worm in the apple of internet interaction.  Youtube is a cesspit of inhumanity; a cursory look on the comments of any Youtube video will not only teach one new expletives and racial slurs, but also demonstrate the horrendous cruelty of anonymity.  Without a person attached to a name, people feel free to fling whatever they would like at whomever.  We would direct your attention to the debate on the “Student Suspended over Crude Video” article, with the additional information that we had to delete at least ten comments for content consisting almost entirely of baseless mud-slinging.  Juxtapose the ninety-something anonymous-but-hostile comments with the fifteen or so named, but very constructive comments on the “Madison Johnson” article.  A name, it seems, adds a least a bit more identity.

Herein lays the tension of the digital self.  In the nineties, the internet was an opportunity to reinvent the self, to “be anyone you want to be.”  Somewhere in the ’00s, with the rise of Myspace, Facebook, and other social networking sites, it became “be the real you”—which, as we’ve already discussed above, is highly problematic in itself.  Now, however, as we enter the teens, are we to be “our real selves, as we would want them to be”?  Do we still hold the illusion of our ability to construct, or do we hold the illusion of individuality, or both, or neither?

As far as I can tell from student reaction, most of us feel that Madison Johnson is an outrage.  But, why?  Is it an invasion of privacy?  Anyone who thinks that our digital selves are at all private has simply missed the entire notion of the internet.  Is it a violation of internet etiquette?  Internet custom is an etiquette in formation, a culture in transition, shaped by the medium that allows “friends” to browse one another’s photographs.  Is it a violation of ethics?

This last question is the crux of the entire issue.  The ethics of the internet are in their infancy.  Before, arguably, we had “public” and “private” selves.  Now, we have a “digital” self, a sort of grey area between.  We want our privacy, but our medium is public.  We want our public voice, but we want that voice to be respected as though it is spoken by an individual with private conceptions of self.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I do not intend to preach gloom-and-doom, nor fire-and-brimstone.  Our “selves” are not falling apart, nor is internet culture evil.  It simply is.  But its existence is perhaps one of the most important lessons we can learn, one of the most important aspects of our society of which we need to be aware.  To simply assume that the digital self is, and operate within the constraints and constructions of the internet, is truly to give up any ability to define ourselves.  We must explore, we must be aware of the constructions, and we must constantly ask ourselves how, and why, we construct ourselves the way that we do.

I am more than an info box.  You are more than an info box.  But the existence of that box, in many ways, has come to define us.  It is an extension of me, an extension of you.  We live in a brave new world, and it is up to us, the academics of our generation, to explore to the fullest digital culture, and our digital selves.

When you think about it Facebook is a surreal place. Just imagine what it would look like in the real world. Friends as Mafia members who carry out their dirty duties via pokes, and seemingly normal people in a cutthroat race to get fans for Big Franks. Have we entered some kind of morbid Candyland? One of the oddest Facebook traditions to me is your first interaction with people, the friend request. When I ask someone to be my friend, I know them.  Even Big Franks is one of my old, childhood buddies. However, people of every kind love to ask for a place on my friend list. They may have some creepy message along with their request or simply a smiling profile pic, but every time I am left peering into their profile info and pictures trying desperately to remember where I met them. I would automatically delete them but this isn’t Myspace, there’s no token friend named Tom on this site! There are also those who you know but wish you didn’t. Usually they don’t feel the same way. After giving them a confident “Do Not Accept” it is only a matter of days until you are once again added and left to make the same decision. In my case, after awhile the redundancy gets to me and I’ll accept only to delete them a few weeks later. In all, this whole friend request game is absurd. It’s like slipping a little note to someone on the street asking, “Will you be my friend?” Even though the necessity of this kind of behavior is obvious for privacy and safety reasons, I find that collecting friends like Pokémon cards is a problematic format for conversing with people. This work flow becomes a game. Do people really know the friends they have on their list? Maybe, and maybe not, their mindset is that the more friends they have the better. This view—common at places like Costco—is detrimental. Confusing quality with quantity is a huge danger on Facebook and people need to realize this.

When surfing Facebook, one of the oddest phenomena is the core of Facebook itself: the wall. Beyond the profile photo or the Info tab, the wall projects the thoughts and feelings of you and your friends for the known world to riffle through. This ability to either peer into your friends’ most current events or yell out your own gives up-to-the-second information on the emotional status. For example, as those of you who have seen the movie Avatar know, the wall is like that life-force-thing which all the creatures on Pandora are connected to. When looking at an active friend’s wall it is as if one has plugged in their fiber-optic pony-tale to their trusty steed. When I was new to Facebook this experience was complete with the whole rush and pupil dilatation effect used in the film. So much information! In addition, most of the comments and posts were so personal I had to immediately un-plug and move on to a new friend, which was usually a similar experience to the first. You see, the wall is the real life equivalent of a shouting match between people who have taken an oath to use only witty comments. The wall is a contest of packaging your personal life with clever anecdotes only to be ripped open by others who think they can do it better. Though I admit to participating in the WWE (Witty Word Entertainment) I question the positive effect it has on my friendships. Because I do love being a contributor to discussion, I participate, but given the highly personal nature of many of the comments I have to withhold my need for wit at the cost of another’s emotional livelihood, I can only handle so much of the personal drama. Frankly, I don’t feel Facebook is the best outlet.

Perhaps the strangest characteristic of Facebook society is the fact that when you are on Facebook it becomes socially acceptable to be a stalker. From perusing pictures to checking status updates, it seems odd, but then you realize this is how Facebook functions. How else does one spend hours looking at a website with user generated content? Facebook exploits human curiosity, especially when it comes to the people you know and care about. It is only natural that we are interested in those we share our lives with. I know for myself, I love looking at pictures. It always amazes me the disconnect between how I see some of my friends and the digital projection they create of themselves. Nothing shows this more than a user’s profile pic. Women in seductive poses and men showing off their muscles is the dominant trend. However, there are many anomalies. One of the most absurd are the one or two people on my friend list who actually post profile pics of famous people they think they look like instead of themselves. I have been duped several times thinking, “Who is this glamorous person?” and almost deleting them only to find out upon examination that I actually do know who the person is, they simply neglected to put a real photo of themselves on their profile. Another aspect of Facebook that amazes me is the Info tab. This tab projects the likes and dislikes, political and religious views, dating status, and contact information of a person in a highly compressed fashion. For example, a common practice currently is to be a part of an odd, unknown political party such as The Republican Party of the Virgin Islands. What does this say about a person? That they are quirky? The bottom line is that it is possible to spend hours checking out the odd things people have to say about themselves. Though a digital projection can be a legitimate way of getting to know someone, is it really the most genuine? Or maybe it is even more genuine than meeting with them face to face. Getting to know my friends in this way always confuses me. An expectation is created on Facebook to continually be fun, upbeat, and witty. This description is not who I am. So, getting to know others by stalking them on Facebook may not be the best way to capture their true identity.

The internet has dramatically changed our relationships to each other and a large part of that is thanks to Facebook. Though Facebook seems like a fun harmless way to connect there are things to consider. Facebook isn’t the real world. The organic garden plant requests and fan pages should tell you this. Personal conversations may be best if they stay with close friends and out of the witty banter of mere acquaintances.  In addition, Facebook is not a replacement for personal interaction. Browsing profiles may seem like it gives a true connection to the people you meet but browsing and stalking are very similar in the land of Facebook. Instead of leaving a comment why not ask that special friend out for coffee? Get to know them from their person rather than from their profile. In all, invest in your real relationships and use Facebook to enhance them, not create them.

Just how radical is this “blurring”? There seems to be a sort of “etiquette disconnect” that has occurred between generations that grew up with technology versus those who did not. Just as you use slang with your friends but switch to a more formal form of English in a classroom setting or at work, so too should you be able to discern between the informal environment of the internet and a formal paper or even an email to one of your professors or your boss. What you think is fine to send to a professor or your boss may be taken as incredibly disrespectful and/or unprofessional.

Scholars have noted a simplification of English starting in Old English, to Middle English, to Early Modern English, to Contemporary English. We are now making the transition to the texting era: simplification at its finest (or worst). However, while technology is certainly changing the way we communicate, it has not yet changed so much that those who grew up without it can understand or respect those who do use that language shift.

As a Reader in the English Department, I have heard horror stories (and have seen it myself from time to time) of students who used “u” instead of “you,” “y” instead of “why,” and even the occasional “their” instead of “there” and vice versa in their formal essays. Some students have gone so far as to send “text gibberish” in an email to their professors and expect them to both understand it and respond to it in a timely manner. What those students might not realize is that by refusing to acknowledge that there is indeed a writing etiquette while in school, they may be limiting their options as to what career they eventually break into.

To illustrate just what a bad writing etiquette can do to your future, look no further than independent music business consultant, Christopher Knab. After receiving countless emails from people looking for a helping hand in the music industry, Knab decided to write an article on professionalism “In an effort to educate you about the business etiquette that exists in the world.” Knab relays several emails that were sent to him containing “major grammar, spelling, and/or punctuation errors. Many other people have no clue how to approach a complete stranger in the music business and introduce themselves properly. Others are blind to the imposition they are making by diving into very complicated issues, without so much as a ‘Hi, my name is _______,’ followed by a simple statement like; ‘If it isn’t too much to ask, I would like to ask you a question.’”

Here is one email (unedited) that Knab received:

“Crazy questions..I am looking to produce and market a song I wrote and am looking for help…first I need a singer..I plan on using the music from the Beverly Hillbilly’s theme song..do I need their permission? How do I get it? The singer I need is someone that has a very low voice…maybe a littlecountryish…exactly like the guy that sings the Beverly Hillbilly’s themesong..where do I find someone? What would they charge to cut four or five versions of the song? Please help…Also..if I was to approach radio stations with the song how does that work? What do I charge them? Do I get a flat up front fee or do I get paid for each time it is played? Or both? Who is the person at the radio station that I would talk to? How do I market the single to the public? Do I need a Record Studio? It’s a Funny song kinda like a Weird Al thing…who would help? Please help”

Now, I’m not saying that a student at PUC actually would write something similar to the emails that Knab received, but in an attempt to curtail any wandering desire to write to a business executive as if he/she were your friend on “fb,” let me just say this: technology may be breaking down etiquette barriers between the younger generations, but that doesn’t mean that the older generations accept or even acknowledge those quickly disintegrating barriers. We use different speech registers for a reason. You wouldn’t speak to your boss as if he/she were a baby. You wouldn’t expect a candidate running for office to use the slang you use with your friends in his/her campaign speeches. You wouldn’t expect a doctor to clarify your condition by explaining it with medical jargon. So why would you expect your written etiquette to be any different? As Dr. Westerbeck, Chair of the English Department at PUC, puts it, “Yes, you can use texting language in a formal paper. You can also eat spaghetti with your hands.” Should you? Probably not.

*For Knab’s full article, please go to http://www.onlinemusicproduction.com/?p=165.

Article used with permission.

Facebook has had five different designs since its origins as a Harvard-only social network in 2004.  In that time it has skyrocketed in popularity, now with over 400 million active users worldwide.  It has become an integral part of the social lives of millions of people.  So, when that system changes, people react vehemently.  Every time Facebook introduces a new design, hundreds of thousands of people join groups protesting the design.  They complain on their walls and to their friends, they threaten to leave.  But in a few months, this protest subsides, and they come to accept the changes, even appreciate them.   When Facebook introduced the newsfeed, users freaked out, accusing Facebook of encouraging stalking.  Now, can you imagine Facebook without it?

Technology has created a new sort of conflict.  The developers of websites like Facebook are engineers.  They think in distinct, problem-solving ways.  When they go to work, they interact with other engineers.  But with 400 million users, their invention is not just an engineering project anymore.  It is now a daily destination for millions of normal people.  A user interface tweak that to an engineer appears brilliant, will, to a typical user, only cause frustration.  These sorts of conflicts will only increase as our world becomes even more engineered.  The way we interact with technology is determined by an engineer.  And this interaction, as our technology encourages us to communicate, will have a profound effect on our relationships and on the way we see the world.

Technology will continue to change.  That is its nature.  If we are to survive in our brave new world of accelerated innovation, we will have to learn to adapt as the tools we use to communicate the most personal aspects of our lives change significantly and often.  Being aware of this change, and understanding the way technologies affect our lives, will help us navigate our interconnected world.  So, the next time Facebook is redesigned, because it will be, and will continue to change until it disappears, instead of complaining, learn to understand why the change was made, and adapt.  Welcome to the 21^st century.

Thus, rather than a paragraph per candidate, the C2 proudly presents full-page interviews. With every candidate. Yes, we realize that it’s a lot of reading, but we greatly encourage you to at least skim the interviews with the executive officers, and the C2 editors. All too often, republican (not the party— the form of government) elections, even on the national scale, are popularity contests. This is, to put it mildly, criminal, and wholly undermines the system from its foundations.

The C2 is the media at PUC. If you intend to be an informed voter—a goal to which all of us should aspire—then here is your source. Please remember: you are selecting the figureheads of your student body next year, the people who will set the tone for the year—not to mention the people who will use several-hundred-thousand dollars of your cumulative tuition.

So , read. You owe it to the candidates, who all have thought a great deal about their potential roles. You owe it to yourselves; if you’re not going to go to the Town Hall debate, use the C2 as the debate forum; compare the candidates, and decide which platform you prefer.

On the other hand, you could just vote for Erika and myself (pg. 19), and all these problems would go away. But, because we do believe in the student voice, make sure that your voice is informed.
Make Thomas Jefferson proud.

So, expand on this idea of “the betterment of the school.” What does that look like, to you, and how would you accomplish it?
I know that right now that [current SA President] Scott [Brizendine] is talking with the current school President [Dr. Heather Knight], and I want to continue with that, and help her remind the rest of the administration that the students are the customers, and that ultimately, we have the decision whether or not we want to come. Right now we’re kind of skating on the fact that we’re Adventist, so we sort of get forced into coming here; why not make it that we want to be here? A lot of these changes are smaller changes—for example, making the school cleaner. Lots of the bathrooms are dirty in the dorms or in the library. If you’ve been in Irwin, you can see that there’s just cobwebs everywhere. If you walk into a learning institution, you don’t want it to look like nobody’s used it recently. We need to act with the intent to retain students. I think that’s just one little step that we can take to make things better.

As President, you are the leader of SA. How do you see the other SA officers fitting into this betterment?
In order to send the administration a message—which is kind of what I want to do—why not make a social event talking about it, have more town halls, have more connection with the Executive Vice President and Senate, have it in the C2—why not? It’s not something that we don’t talk about—we do. It’s a matter of making it known to the administration that it’s a big deal—not just something that we like to complain about, but rather, something that we want to get fixed. And I think hat as a whole team, we can accomplish that.

What is your major, and what previous experience do you bring to your position? How do you feel it will help?
I’m a business major with pre-law emphasis. I think that running anything like a business makes it more efficient. Establishing objectives and managing it that way makes an organization run more efficiently; it sets up a goal that everyone can share. Make a goal, and reach it. I’ve been involved with SA since I was a freshman in high school. With all the organizations I’ve put together, I feel like I can lead SA toward something better.

As I recall, you’re also a Senator. It seems like there’s a gap between SA and Senate, and Senate and the student body. Do you agree, and what would you do to solve that?
I am a Senator-at-large, this year. I feel like most senators should be involved in the other organizational bodies here. Not only is it the senator’s job to talk about rules and bring in issues, but also to become part of the organization as a whole; if you don’t know what’s happening on top, then how do you know what you can do to help on bottom?

And between Senate/SA and the Students?
There’s definitely a gap. We’ve been taking critical steps toward making that better. We’ve had town halls more frequently. I think that an instrumental change that would make that more attended would be to have it somewhere other than the Campus Center. The Center is limiting; just the fact that chairs are stacked in there makes people walk away; they’re afraid that they have to commit to something. Why not have it in the cafeteria? Then you don’t have to commit to it. If we don’t make it easy for them to come in and go out without embarrassing or committing themselves, then they’re not going to come in.

So, in the end, why should people vote for you?
All the other candidates are very well qualified. If feel that I have a drive for it that’s more based in the fact that I want this school to be better than just, “That would be cool; I could make some new changes.” Little changes aren’t going to make the school where we want it to be. I want to make it known that the school is not going to go away. We want something more, and hope to have it soon.

I also want to bring the focus back on celebrating being PUC.  We celebrate a lot of things on this campus: we’re proud of being MOG, we’re proud of our majors—we have Psi Chi, STD, nursing, education—we celebrate ethnic diversity—SAWA, KASA ASA—but what we rarely seem to do at the this school is celebrate being PUC.  The only time I see that is at home basketball games, for about two hours. I want more things like dorm Olympiad, Midnight Madness.  We should have spirit week.  I’d like to promote a culture here that is proud of being PUC—one where we can go home and say, “This is why I’m proud of PUC; this I where I go.”  A lot of people don’t realize how proud of PUC they are until they’re alumns.

And how do you intend to do that?
I think there should be a way to contact the president.  Right now, the way it’s being handled is a case-by-case basis.  If the president isn’t accessible to the masses, then there’s something wrong.  I can put my email out there; I’ll have an open door policy.  Town Halls, though they’re an EVP thing—they can happen.

So, you want to work on the PUC culture.  What do you think enables you to do that?
I’ve been asking a lot of people what I should do as president, because again, it goes back to the question, “What does the President do?”  I think it should be an important role, and should have the capacity to affect the culture of the campus.

I am currently the Executive Vice President of SA.  I know how the structure of SA works, and I know its current problems and issues that I can attempt to cancel.  I want to cut through the red tape.  Some people might find that [my incumbency] as a disadvantage, saying that I’m not a fresh mind, but I see it as a strength that I’m willing to take outside influences.  I’m not closed minded; it’s not like I know everything—I don’t.  I’m willing to hear from the people.

Speaking of hearing from the people: there seems to be somewhat of a gap between the students, the SA/Senate, and the administration.  Do you agree, and if so, how do you intend to address this issue?
The President is involved in all three: he or she talks to students, talks to the administration, and he or she is head of SA.  Whatever happens between those three entities, people should know about it; people pay the 30k to come here, they should know what’s being done with it.

As far as SA and Senate go: Less internal focus; more external focus.

A major aspect of this change will be transparency.  I feel like a lot of what the various administrative organizations do—from SA to Senate to the school administration—we have no idea what the reasoning behind their actions are.  We’ll see them doing something or talking about something, and we wonder what it is.  I feel like there’s a lot that goes on behind closed doors that the students are entitled to know.  At the end of the day, we’re customers of PUC.  They [administrative organizations] shouldn’t be here to serve themselves; they should be here to serve us.  As such, they should allow us to have a voice in whatever their decision process is going to be.

And how do you intend to go about implementing this transparency?
I really don’t know until I ‘m put in that position […] but it’s all about dialogue.  The new President [Dr. Heather Knight] seems really open, and it seems like next year she’ll be more settled and have more time to talk.  I’ll become the middleman between the president and the school.  I think she cares alt about the school.  If the students and the administration both really care about the school, I feel like we’ll rise up together to have better communication.

It seems as though there is a gap between SA/Senate and the student body.  Do you agree, and if so, how do you intend to address this issue?
It’s true; one doesn’t really know about what SA is doing except the Social Vice President and Campus Chronicle [C2].  You kind of have to wonder about what the other persons do.  If I become President, I’ll try to make some changes within SA.  I don’t want the officers to have crossover positions, but when one thing is kind of slow, they’ll go and help out and advertise what the other people are doing.  I feel like right now, somebody in one position will be taking care of a topic in a particular area; if there’s more interconnection between the government, it will be easier to let other people know.  It’s hard to see immediate results.

You’ve mentioned changing things, and though you’ve also admitted to the relativity of that goal, given the changing situation of the student body and SA every year, do you have any ideas about what those changes might be?
I do think that the PUC Constitution needs to be reworked in a lot of ways.  What exactly I want to change, I’m not sure yet; we’ll have to see where the school is at the end of the year, what kind of stuff I’m going to inherit.  I’m going to wait and see; I’m a senator so I know what’s going on.  I’ve seen bills pushed through […] it seems like there’s a lot of red-tape, and I feel like that needs to be changed, as well.

Your platform hinges on student involvement.  What is your experience with that, and how do you intend to further involvement?
I’m a writer for PR—not the department [Communications/Journalism], but the school [PUC].  I go around interviewing a lot of great people on campus that I wouldn’t have met otherwise.  I’ve learned a lot about PUC through the office.  I’ve spent a lot of time approaching different aspects of the school.  I’ve gotten to really appreciate the school more.  I’m currently working on an article about international students; every single one of them, when I ask them what they like about PUC, they say it’s a great place for international students.  It’s given me a real appreciation for how the school works and what it has to offer the students.  I’ve also gotten to meet members of the administration and the faculty; I feel like that connectedness will be helpful.  I’m a Senator-at-Large this year.  I started a club on campus.  In high school I served on multiple cabinets; I’ve held a lot of leadership positions.  My personality and my ability to work with people on an individual basis, and my ability to adapt to individuals and their situations qualifies me for this office, and will help me accomplish what I would like to get done.