The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/25/09 Section: Opinions

Pandora doesn't deserve money from University

I believe our history is important.

I believe preserving our history, as a university and a student body, is truly significant. Facebook records of events, relationships, protests, groups, trends - these are ephemeral and won't last compared to good paper copies.

I blanched when I read Claire Rock's article on preserving the Pandora. A $60,000 budget for a yearbook that's sold less than 400 copies? $15,000 saved on advertising, begging the question of how much they were spending before? Did she read this column before she sent it in? Where on Earth is this money going?

The Pandora has failed. It's not profitable, sure. We might subsidize it if it remained relevant, but Ms. Rock failed to provide a shade of evidence that it has.

Somehow I doubt it really reflects even a fraction of the myriad experiences and sub-cultures that compose our University.

There are better ways to preserve our history. Keep journals, yes; let individual organizations make yearbooks or scrapbooks; donate your records to the library so they'll be kept.

But don't fund the exorbitant costs of a publication that fails to be either relevant or profitable.

Phillip Brettschneider
Sophomore, Marietta
Anthropology and English

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