So what’s worse than waking up early for class on a dreary day with the entire campus tense from the election of yet another Machine candidate last night? Having it topped off by having to read “CW caters to thoughtless student body” about how much news this guy reads and how little he drinks. I agree that understanding world situations is very important, especially for students. Currently our world is changing rapidly and we need to be up to date on how it’s changing and try to ascertain why it’s changing. But to say that the students of the University of Alabama are uninterested and uninformed because The Crimson White covers mostly campus and community events is astoundingly stupid.

Probably the most mindboggling aspect of the column was his complaint about the lack of global coverage in The CW. Someone please tell the author that if he looks to the right of the stack of CWs there will probably be a New York Times or a USA Today with all the global news he wants. Business students get the Financial Times for free; the University Library System has wonderful resources for all kinds of news; you can get an RSS feed of BBC news directly to your browser; or you can download news apps that get you the BBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo!, CNET, CNN and so on for a whopping $0. If you’re relying on The CW for global news, all the sources above provide more global and national news faster and without any asinine columns about how informed and sober the author is.

Obviously neither UA nor Alabama taxpayers feel like sending students to Libya to report on the situation for The CW. Of course they could reword AP stories but, when news is as available as it is today, why bother? For better or for worse, The CW covers things around campus and around our community that students are interested and involved in. If that’s the Sunday alcohol sales for which we utilized the democratic process, so be it.

So, if there are better sources of “real” news, why do we have The CW? Because it covers UA exclusively and gives us a chance to have a dialogue with each other about unique events that we as students at UA face.  Look at the second page of The CW. You can see all the ideas that students are forming to discuss these events and solutions to rising problems. Just imagine students creating events to really unite other students and address current local and global crises instead of throwing a temper tantrum in The CW because you assume you’re the only person aware of what’s going on. In the same paper in which the column was printed, there is news of a Middle East scholar who is speaking on campus, arts festivals, SGA elections, opinions on hate and racism specific to UA and more.

I think Mr. McGough’s column should be taken as a challenge for the students at UA. Let’s show everyone, even people as uniformed as Ben here, that not only are we aware of our world, but that we understand our role in these situations and how we can positively impact them. Let’s show the Ben McGoughs of the world that what you know about global issues isn’t nearly as important as what you do with that knowledge, and that being aware of what is going on is no longer enough, at least, for the “thoughtless” students of the University of Alabama.

Robert Maxwell is a senior majoring in economics.