Input is significant
COMMENTARY
Josh Deitz

My brother is a freshman at TCU this year, so I’ve been able to watch him grow firsthand. After a week, my brother seemed like a different person. He was more mature, more grown up. He was turning into an adult.

Everywhere else I looked, I saw exactly the opposite.

It started when I walked into my Spanish class and was handed a randomly created seating chart. After realizing that no, I was not flashing back to seventh grade, I couldn’t help but be a little angry. A seating chart for college students is simply not appropriate.

Little things like choosing where you sit are what differentiate college from grammar school. There is a different relationship between professors and students in college than there is in grade school. College is supposed to be a training ground for the real world. No one tells you where to sit or when to eat. No one reminds you to study or do your laundry. These little details make you grow up.

Of course, this lack of respect doesn’t only happen to college students. Sunday, the Star-Telegram yanked the normal Doonesbury strip because it referenced a news story about masturbation. Ironically, the comic was making fun of the prudishness of people who are scared to read about masturbation in the newspaper. You can check it out online at (www.doonesbury.com).

This type of censorship is a slap in the face to Star-Telegram readers. It’s nothing new for the Star-Telegram (they routinely handle their readership with kid gloves), but it is still obnoxious. I skip over about 75 percent of the comics page because they are not interesting. Anyone scared of Doonesbury can do the same. What counts is giving readers the chance to make that decision for themselves.

Sunday only got worse as the day continued. Before he war in Iraq, the Bush administration refused to give out any estimate of how much the war and subsequent occupation would cost. Now that we are stuck in Iraq for the next half a dozen years, the administration is finally letting America in on the price tag.

Instead of treating the American people like adults and letting them make an informed decision based on the real projected costs, the administration decided to just go ahead with the war and deal with the consequences later. Never mind that this meant treating the American people as if they were sheep. Just tack another $80 billion on to next year’s $500 billion deficit.

If you want people to act like adults, you have to treat them like adults. That means asking for their input and then listening to what they say. It means treating their opinions with respect. One of the greatest problems this country faces is the detachment so many people feel because it seems like our opinions do not matter.

If you want good citizens who vote and participate in politics, you have to be honest with them. If you want readers to respect your newspaper, you have to show that you are willing to let them judge content for themselves. If you want the respect of your students, you have to consider their input.

Being an adult means making decisions. We need leaders who will let us make those decisions for ourselves. If we do not have a chance to participate in the decision-making process, we might as well stay in seventh grade forever.

Josh Deitz is a senior political science from Atlanta, Ga.