Enough. We need to talk. Students deserve respect as adults. The utter degrading lack of communication from the administration to the student body has reached the limit. Saint Louis University’s policies affecting student organizations comes parading towards us dressed in mockery and distrust.

Una, Rainbow Alliance, Black Student Alliance, Students United for Palestine, and a considerable number of other student organizations that fall under the CCC all now have to submit additional forms to the CCC in order to book events on campus; only after CCC approval can these groups submit forms to Student Involvement. This, and a large, jumbled plethora of other forms, regulations and advisor changes, has formed a barrage of initiatives that have left students blind sided, confused and angry.

To what purpose is SLU dismembering its student events policies? We do not know. There are two ideas that we can grasp, however.

First, the administration has apparently tabbed students under some label of “Philistines” in their record books. It’s obvious from the silence on their part and their increased bureaucratic controls (without student feedback) that they fear us. They fear students will not act rationally or responsibly; if they tell us their reasoning behind their actions, there might be protests like the ones last year. Is there something to hide, then?

This distrust and secrecy alone is causing the effect they want to avoid. The policies concern student organizations, the leaders of which are some of the most intelligent and respectable students on campus. It is insulting to feel like lambs; they expect us to meekly, timidly accept these rules – rules that come with neither explanation nor consultation, rules cloaked in mistrust.

Second, we can perhaps think of ways SLU is trying to improve. We want to give them the benefit of the doubt that there is some greater good to be reached through these new policies. However, we can’t see the truth in that idea when the administration puts little faith in students to provide guiding and intelligent suggestions as to how policies need to be framed. It more honestly appears to us as if they are trying to push students far away from administrative decision making, and not at all trying to improve our University. This might not be the intent; but again, we don’t know their intentions when nothing has been communicated.

Vague replies – far from avoiding exposure and thus anger and controversy – are destroying the administration’s credibility for the student body; people are angry already.

We demand communication. There is such a thing as a student voice.  We cannot let SLU bypass us. We need to send a message, a message that we are here. We are active.

We are listening, and hearing nothing. We ask critical questions, and receive tepid, political and dodgy answers. We are tired of it. We need explanations, even if they might cause controversy.

Prove to us that you are capable of opening up, and give us an opportunity to prove to you that we can behave like the adults we truly are. Let’s sit down, open up, and work this out together. Let’s talk.