Being abroad last semester, I found it difficult to keep tabs on everything happening back at Tufts. Yet from what I’ve gathered from friends and a few clicks on the Daily and Roundtable web pages, it seems that pretty much everyone was confused by what exactly went on with Referenda 3 and 4. As last semester’s Public Editor, Shabazz Stuart, pointed out in his April 9th column, the media is the key link between the political class and the people whom they serve. He offered a wake-up call to campus media to use their weight to inform policy. Just as Tufts publications ought to reflect public opinion to policy makers, they ought also to disseminate, clarify, and investigate policy proposals. In order for democracy to work, people need to make informed decisions. At Tufts, people become informed by reading any one of our daily, weekly, and bi-weekly publications. Yet the referenda outcomes of last year’s presidential ballot and this year’s vote sent a clear message to all members of the Media Advocacy Board: we’ve got some work to do.

The changes to the Tufts Community Union Senate proposed by Referenda 3 and 4 were no light matter, yet I sincerely doubt that even half of the student population had a firm grasp on what exactly they stood for. Unlike many administration-based campus programs dealing with diversity, the referenda were written and sponsored directly by students who took their own initiative. In the pre-referenda system, four Community Reps, each elected by the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS), the Asian Student Union (ASU), the Pan-African Alliance (PAA), and the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA), had a ‘place at the table’ of Senate meetings but were unable to vote on the substantive issue of money allocation, and could not be appointed to the Executive Board. Referendum 3 proposed a major change to this system: Community Reps would be elected by the entire Tufts population and accordingly would receive voting and appointment rights, including to Allocations Board and Executive Board. On the other hand, Referendum 4 supported the status quo on this issue, maintaining Community Reps as declawed Senators but adding a new “Diversity and Community Affairs” position to represent their collective interests (Ref. 3 also had this provision). Tufts students were given the option of re-affirming the old system or welcoming a new one. The gist of the text was simple: you either wanted to give Community Reps full voting power, or you didn’t.

Yet both questions passed. Fast forward a few months to this semester. The runoff between these same two proposals resulted in Referendum 3 passing by a single vote with a mere 516 supporters, hardly a campus mandate, leaving room for confusion and calls for re-votes. On an issue so decisive, how could both of these murky outcomes be possible? The answer lies in how Tufts media treated the issue.

In truth, Tufts students could have visited the ECOM website and seen the text of the referenda themselves. But considering how busy we all complain about being and the haste with which we fill out the WebCenter form, I don’t think this is a reasonable expectation. Campus media should have included this on their agenda weeks before the election. Instead, Tufts students were left mostly ignorant, confused, or complacent, as indicated by the 22% voter turnout rate. I give credit to the Daily for improving their news coverage over last semester’s coverage, yet it just wasn’t enough. In fact, the Daily’s editorial encouraging students to abstain and send Senate back to the drawing board seemed an easy way out of deep coverage and conversation. Other publications weren’t much better: The Primary Source and Roundtable gave readers hardly more than a page of opinion, while the Observer remained silent on the issue. To all Media Advocacy Board members, I say this: referenda don’t write themselves. Where were the interviews with the people who wrote them? Where was the analysis of potential results from the passage of either Referendum? Where was the timeline of ECOM’s managing of the situation? Where was the commentary on other colleges that have similar systems? In short, did we live up to our obligation to be a conduit between government and people, media and readership?

This year’s election had the potential to be productive and thought provoking, a test of Media’s ability to get to the heart of the issue. Instead, campus media failed to generate campus wide discussion or engage the readership, relegating the referenda to a marginal issue of Senators and Group of Six leadership. Think back to Prop 8 in California. Or Question 2 on marijuana in Massachusetts. Referenda matter and I speak to both the MAB and the readership when I say that moving forward we should start treating them as such.