Low in fat, high in ideas

After spending $400 on books, not finding the proper bath mat to match your hand towels and realizing that you can't find any parking near your dorm, you're probably looking for someone to listen. Someone who cares. \nThese are dark and trying times, America. Somebody needs to extend a loving embrace.\nWe just want you to know, Opinion cares about you.\nHere at the IDS Opinion page, we're committed to providing quality personal care to your gripes, complaints, pet peeves, annoyances, hindrances and fits of anger. So to aid in that pursuit, aside from providing you with our staff of hand-picked columnists, chosen from the finest barley and hops in the greater Bloomington area, who will bring insight and thoughtful musings on national and local issues and trends, we are continuing to offer our world famous, Granny-smith letters mailbox.\nBy writing in to the Jordan River Forum via letters@indiana.edu, each student can make use of the opportunity to voice concerns to the entire campus community. The benchmark of democracy, a free and public press where the citizens' needs can be highlighted, only operates if you, the readers, give us said voice to air. \nBut the Forum is not limited to negative correspondence. \nGot a news story you feel isn't being covered? \nLet us know. \nWant to praise a professor or a member of the grounds crew for their tireless efforts that rarely get due plaudits? \nDrop us a line.\nOppressed, depressed, obsessed with controversy?\nShare with us.\nWe don't judge. This isn't Vietnam. We have rules.\nAnd to add some spice to the punch, you will see some new features on the page. We're joining the rest of the nation in a love-lock with reality television, so come mid-semester, the fate of our staff columnists will lie in your hands. In the hopes that we might continue to provide the best news commentary on the Bloomington campus, we're putting our staff up to a vote-off. When the time comes and the audience choices are tallied, one columnist will be forced to leave Opinion Island.\nOld favorites will return as well. You will see guest columns from faculty and administration, editorial cartoons which may or may not make sense -- but are sure to offend somebody, somewhere -- head-to-head columns and the return of our "man on the street" feature.\nSince 1867, Opinion has striven to make you think. Our ability to learn and benefit from the news extends only so far as we are able to analyze its effects. We create the positions; your letters create the dialogue. Together, we initiate change.\nThe rest of the paper brings you the facts.\nOpinion makes those facts matter.\nIt's what's human about the media.\nOpinion.\nWe're still trying.