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Editorial | First "Tuesdays with Charlie and Courtney" sustains transparency

Editorial Board

It's office hours with the president and vice president of our student body. The door is open and they're there to listen. And if you're reading this before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, you should head over to Bell Tower's Caribbean Room to talk one-on-one with your new student body president and vice president Charlie Schreiber and Courtney Bernard.

With their ultimate goal to be "accessible to every student on Miami's campus," this reoccurring office-hour type event will give any student, first-year or super-senior, the ability to sit down and talk with these key decision-makers about anything and everything.

Throughout their spring campaign, Charlie and Courtney, a.k.a Empower Miami, stressed the importance of closing the gap between the student government and the student body.

Their Twitter and Facebook pages were highly-used resources for communication between Empower Miami and Miami students during their spring campaign and these first weeks of school.

The Editorial Board at The Miami Student is glad we are seeing some changes in ASG's attempts to connect with their students. "Tuesdays with Charlie and Courtney" is a great leap forward in creating transparency between the student body and ASG.

A lot of students don't realize the importance of ASG and their impact on things such as tuition, on-campus events and Miami's 400 plus student organizations. ASG also oversees Miami Activities & Programming (MAP), Residence Hall Association (RHA) and club sports' budgets.

The big picture: they have a lot more decision-making power than the average student may realize.

Though it may seem intimidating we encourage everyone to attend these events and speak up about issues they have on campus.

"I think its certainly something people will go to later on, but maybe not the first one. People might be intimidated because they don't know what to expect," Senior Madeline Broda said.

Though we may be a bit anxious sometimes when approaching our professors during office hours, we hope "Tuesdays with Charlie and Courtney" will be different.

Students should feel encouraged and comfortable approaching these two; they are our peers after all. For example, on their Facebook event page, they write, "Grab a snack and just introduce yourself or get dinner and spend the entire time with us - we want to get to know you!"

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They're already setting a totally-approachable tone, which we think is necessary to get students to attend.

There is a physical place for students to meet with Charlie and Courtney in a casual environment which is important to the well-being and connectivity of ASG's executive board and Miami's 15,000 undergrads.

We see a lot of things worth praise with Charlie and Courtney's new Tuesday night initiatives. Though if you're like us, this is probably the first you're hearing about this.

The first "Tuesdays with Charlie and Courtney" definitely has the potential to see a line out the door though we're not sure how many students really know about the event-outside of ASG-fanatics and friends of the duo.

"I started following their campaign last semester and that is how I knew about [Tuesdays with Charlie and Courtney]," Broda said.

Other than those recently exposed to their campaign just a few months ago, word-of-mouth may contribute to higher attendance later on in the semester.

Currently, the Charlie and Courtney Facebook page has 566 likes and their Twitter page has 340 followers. Enrollment at Miami is about 15,000 undergraduates, so that's 3.7 percent of the student body connected with them on Facebook and 2.3 percent of the student body following them on Twitter.

If Charlie and Courtney can manage to inform more people about this event, they can have an impact on Miami that we've needed for quite some time.