Contrary to popular belief, The University News finds its stories not simply through our own investigations. We are also part of that common, organic force of nature that we have rightfully termed “the grapevine”.

We watch our Facebook invitations for ongoing Saint Louis University events, pick up news from daily conversations and read the Newslink e-mails that, for many of our peers, often remain neglected. We use these external sources to augment the news we officially gather from our sources and contacts.

As people with a boundless curiosity for the how-and-why of the hum-and-thrum of campus events, we perpetually look for interesting happenings to report on.

We write to inform you, the SLU student body. We work to bring news stories to increase and enrich your knowledge about your environment.

But there are only so many of us, and we can only speculate about the expansive number of events and curiosities that paint our campus ambiance.

So we started Civic Journalism, an effort by us to further serve the SLU community and learn about what students wish to hear in our paper.

We open ourselves to you by allowing you to posit questions to us dealing with the abundance of curios you wonder about daily.

Not only does this process involve hearing from students about the mysteries of SLU, but this also allows us to investigate issues that may otherwise never come to our attention.

Students are also more likely to learn more than they expect; with our unique capabilities to contact individuals and tap our abundance of resources, we can form a more complete picture of the issue than the average person could compile by herself.

In a truly democratic and grass-roots effort, civic journalism seeks to represent the student voice. It validates and elevates your thoughts because, by reporting on stories in direct response to your queries, we make it a principle to allow the student body to drive the content of the newspaper.

Last year, we answered questions about things like the mysterious origins of the cow in front of Au Bon Pain, and SLU’s lack of debate team.

Questions ranged from food service to the hermaphrodite statue in front of DeMatthias Hall. We’d like to help you find out what you’d really like to know. .

We urge you to send us your burning questions by visiting our website and submitting them under the UNews ‘Civic Journalism’ tab or send us your thoughts via e-mail at [email protected], and we can unleash our investigative powers to bring you the answers to your biggest quandaries.