Editorial—In a Rush

I over-estimated my abilities this week.  I told the candidates for the AUSU election that they could have until midnight on Thursday, Feb 20th, to get their responses to me.  I wanted to make sure they had as long as possible to consider their answers and maybe look into some things that AUSU was currently doing before finalizing their responses and sending them to me.  I figured that since I wouldn’t actually be editing their answers at all, it would be a cakewalk.

I was wrong.

Nineteen candidates were sent our little questionnaire, and twelve responded. That was about how many I expected, but what I didn’t count on was the simple drudge-work of making sure each answer was labelled with their name, and then interspersed into the appropriate place in the rapidly growing article, so that for every question you have all twelve answers laid out one after another.  It didn’t seem like it would be that difficult a task, but I neglected to think about just how long the full article would be, and ensuring that answers were going under the right questions became difficult when the screen simply wasn’t big enough to be able to show you which question you were pasting a candidate’s answer into.

On top of that, some candidates left a question or two blank, some candidates simply deleted the whole question from their response, leading me to have to suddenly realize their answers weren’t matching up to the correct question once I was two thirds of the way through the cut and paste. All perfectly reasonable actions for the candidates to take, they just added a lot more extra time to the layout of the article up on the web, and then back down in the PDF.

Fortunately, I’ve managed to get everything except this editorial up on the website. The PDF will follow in a bit as I struggle with the overall layout having to fit in an article that has run to almost eight pages.  I have to admit, I didn’t expect that to happen.

In the meantime, however, you can still enjoy both our interview with the candidates, as well as our feature article interviewing student Alek Golijanin.  Observant readers will note that Alex is a candidate, but the timing of his student interview in this week’s “Minds We Meet” is completely coincidental.  Also, be sure to check out Natalia Iwanek’s latest article on the dangers and difficulties facing journalists around the world.

And of course we always include our information on scholarships, upcoming events (including the AUSU election), advice—whether personal or on your taxes, thoughtful articles from students examining just what it is to be an AU student, and more.  But honestly, to my mind, our most important article this week is our candidate interviews.  Remember that these candidates are going to be our face to the Kenney government, to the AU board of governors, and, of course, to us as they work to figure out ways that our money can benefit all of us.

Enjoy the read!