Reaching a compromise

The Listening Tour officially began last week with a discussion including members of the newly formed IU Campus Greens. As a growing national political party and one with a strong campus and community presence, IU Greens wanted to see their party's beliefs and concerns addressed in the IDS opinion pages. \n Every Monday a member from the IU College Republicans and Democrats are featured in a head-to-head, where a specific campaign issue is debated between the two parties. \nAt our meeting Thursday, the Greens said they wanted to be included in this type of forum. Greens also wanted to know why they were not initially asked to participate and why members of the mainstream were the only featured columnists.\nAll of these concerns were valid and during the meeting we explained IDS policy, specifically including how the opinion page is run.\nFour days a week, the opinion section is provided one page. This space allots room for a staff editorial, a dissent to the staff editorial and three columns. Depending on space, cartoons or letters to the editor might also be run. Tuesdays are run a little differently, because the section is two pages. Because of this year's election, the opinion editor, sophomore Ashley Keen chose to run more politically oriented columns and letters from the past week.\nTwo types of columnists exist at the IDS. Some are weekly columnists who have a space to fill every week, and others are featured bi-monthly. Keen explained most of the 19 opinion columnists were selected at the start of the school year, some even as early as August. \nSo immediately the IDS runs into space restrictions where there is not enough room to print all the columns copy editors receive. \nAs far as the Greens' concern, Keen said only members of the IU College Republicans and IU College Democrats were selected for the head-to-head because of space restrictions. "We decided to just choose the two parties that most students would select from in November," she said.\nBut after hearing the concerns of the IU Greens, the IDS looked at its policy again.\nThe IDS opinion editors and management decided to allow the Green Party and other third parties the opportunity to address the voters on the opinion pages. For the next three weeks, third party representatives will be featured Tuesday. Keen said she has contacted members of the Reform, Green, Natural Law, Libertarian, Socialist and Constitution Parties to submit weekly columns. Most have agreed to submit columns.\nKeen said the main reason she decided to incorporate the third parties is because this is a presidential election year, and it is important for everyone to get their message out to voters. \nThis week, the IDS will visit with members of Headspace and the media and politics telecommunications class. If you would like to schedule a listening tour stop or want more information, call the newsroom at 855-0760 or e-mail gczark@indiana.edu.