After reading The Beacon’s editorial “Lack of transparency affects students” we at the Coalition of Students for Reform, feel that public information should in fact be public. The information requested by The Beacon should not be hidden in password protected sites, but readily available online and physically to anyone who requests it. That is the meaning of transparency.
Given the resources at their disposal, there is no excuse for the Modesto A. Maidique Campus or the Biscayne Bay Campus to not publish and make available all documents and information that affect the student body and university as a whole.
Our student newspaper, emphasis on student, should not have to go to such extraordinary lengths to obtain public information. Not when transparency has been an SGA promise for years. SGA has not only a legal obligation to make records available under Florida law, but under its own constitution as well.
We at the CSR understand those in SGA are also students and have many obligations, but when they chose to run for office, they chose to live by a higher set of standards.
When it comes to an organization that manages roughly $13 million in student fees must not only have the highest standards, but live up to them as well.
To be truly transparent, there needs to be a top-to-down restructuring of how SGA presents information to the public.
Keeping SGA matters private should be a thought process removed from SGA rationale.
Instead a completely open system that encourages student input and participation should be implemented.
No one should have to go to the extreme lengths The Beacon did to obtain public information.
-FIU’s Coalition of Students for Reform
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