On Our Mind: Phone forums

Cartoon by Rudy Rankin

Something that The Bulletin staff looks forward to every production day is listening to the phone forum messages. They are at times funny, angering, hurtful, happy, crazy and informational. Perhaps the most important aspect, however, is that they’re fun to read. However, during this school year, the amount of phone forums have dwindled, leading the editorial staff to consider removing the phone forum as a feature in our newspaper.

The phone forum has been a feature of The Bulletin for nearly 15 years but only recently have we had to consider dropping it as a feature due to low response numbers.

Readers often tell us that one reason they pick up The Bulletin is to read the phone forums. However, if there are none to print it’s difficult to have the feature in the paper.

There are two options available for readers to submit messages to the phone forum. The most obvious is by calling our phone forum line at 341-5469. The second option is to submit them via our Web site at www.esubulletin.com.

Although students have this option, we think they should use the phone line more often. The random, silly messages that used to be left on the phone line do not have the same effect when viewed online.

The fact that a person is completely anonymous when they post online is probably more appealing to most. While calling the phone forum does not guarantee a person’s anonymity 100 percent, the likelihood of a person being identified is very low.

Too often we will receive phone forums late at night from students who are inebriated. While those phone forums would sometimes annoy the editors who had to hear them while working on Wednesday nights, it is better than not having any at all.

The point of having the phone forum is not only to let students leave silly messages, but to provide them with a medium to vent and make comments about things going on around campus. Occasionally, phone forums will serve as news tips for us that result in a news story.

And phone forums aren’t just for students to use. Faculty, administration and the general campus community are free to utilize this service.

While we may not be able to print every phone forum due to space issues, we try to print as many as possible and lately we’ve been able to print them all.

Most college newspapers have a phone forum and students are quick to use the service to get their opinion heard. Take advantage of both the phone line and online forum while it’s here. Otherwise, you may soon open The Bulletin to the opinion page and find something a lot less interesting in the space where the phone forum used to be.

So get to work—send in or call in your random thoughts, your emotional outbursts, your drunken phrases and your disagreement with classroom policies. Let us know what’s on your mind.