Youth must be served ... with editorials: reinstating the editorial page allowed us to challenge leaders ... and readers.

My newspaper was one of the few that didn't have an editorial page ... until this year. The Tribune at Marquette University hadn't published editorials since 1994. But this year, we decided to pull the editorial page out of hibernation.

In 1994, the board published an editorial in support of RU-486, an abortion pill. Such an opinion didn't mesh well with the university's Catholic/Jesuit values, and a disagreement between the administration and the editorial board ensued. When the dust settled, the editorial page was eliminated. It's not clear if it was a mandate from the university or the paper's choice. Regardless, editors since then have followed the same path, whether they were nervous about repercussions from the administration or overwhelmed by the work involved in reviving editorials.

In place of an editorial page, the paper had a letters to the editor page, where readers could submit up to seven hundred words. It served as the only forum of public discourse in the paper but didn't fulfill the objectives of an editorial page. Submissions often turned into unintelligent name calling or ranting. Readers rarely wrote in to highlight public concerns and rarely suggested a plausible solution.

It became clear that the readers deserve a higher level of public discourse. While journalists don't have all the answers, we are in a unique position of being able to highlight social ills that could be brought to light on the editorial page. We also thought that an editorial page can challenge student government leaders to keep their promises, highlight problems university officials might overlook, and overall, be a leader in the community. Outside of our news pages, nobody on our campus was challenging the administration or the student government!

Some issues we wanted to bring to light didn't fit on the news pages. Our campus was in the midst of a mascot name debate--should we stick with our ten-year-old, politically correct "Golden Eagle" or revert to the possibly incorrect and tradition-laced "Warriors"?--and we weren't able to take a position without an editorial page.

My fellow editors and I wanted to bring a strong editorial voice back to the paper. And a few contest judges suggested the same thing over the years. Once we started, we got advice and direction from a retired editorial writer at Marquette and working editorial writers at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Chicago Tribune.

Our first editorial was about a program for sexual violence victims on campus that lost its federal funding. We wrote that the university or student government should step in to help fund the program and suggested that a portion of student activity fees support it. In another editorial, the board said the Terri Schiavo case and decision of whether to replace her feeding tube isn't one for the media or the courts to decide. And on the mascot issue, we sided with keeping the current Golden Eagle and suggested the university board of trustees worry about more important things than a mascot--they have dragged the debate out for almost a year.

It's our hope that the commentary and argument presented in editorials will help develop readers' communication skills. In our explanation to our readers, we said in part: "The Tribune editors feel that informed discussion is a vital part of the learning process--one we hope to augment with our editorials. And as higher education students at a Jesuit institution, we believe public debate is a significant element of learning. We hope to be part of a renewed sense of debate on campus--one that will help cultivate the leaders of our generation."

Jen Haberkorn is editor-in-chief of the Tribune at Marquette University. E-mail j.haberkorn@ ameritech.net