Dear directors and senators,

Welcome back to a new academic year with new challenges. We hope you are adjusting well to your positions as student leaders on campus. Many of you are new to student government after its change in structure, so this is a new opportunity for you.

In a meeting with us before classes started, Executive Director Jonathan Bey promised USG would bring bigger musical acts to Kent State and focus on bringing talent and promoting the concerts. We can imagine that this is a difficult task that takes a great deal of time and effort, but you are more than just concert promoters. You are faced with the task of representing students within the university administration and bringing about visible changes to help them.

You have already planned to bring Cartel, Yung Joc and MC Lars to campus Sept. 11, so we can see that you are beginning to fulfill that goal. We like that you are going out and talking to students about what acts they would like to see. Let’s see that extended to other issues, even though we know it will never be possible to please everyone with one concert.

We encourage you and your greater numbers to talk to students more instead of waiting for them to come to you. Each senator has the dual role of being part of his or her constituency as well as representing it. The senators will probably have an easier time of focusing on student concerns within their constituencies and bringing about visible changes for their students.

They can see what’s wrong in their colleges and come up with innovative ways of fixing problems. Senators, don’t waste this opportunity. Students from the College of Architecture and Environmental Design do not have the same concerns as students from the College of Arts and Sciences.

We hope you will do the best you can to bring student concerns to the university’s administration, however reluctant it may be to hear you. You, like us, are in a more advantageous position than the average student to do this.

Bey seems genuinely interested in helping students. Students, you should attend a public USG meeting, which occur at 4 p.m. every Wednesday in the Governance Chambers on the second floor of the Student Center. Also, the new USG Web site should be up and running by the end of the month. Find out which senator represents you and your college and talk to him or her. The student government has been accessible to the Stater in the past and it should be to you too. They have promised to be more available for you, and senators may be accessible within their respective colleges.

Seek them out.

The above editorial is the consensus of the Daily Kent Stater editorial board.