The editorial is the opinion of the editorial board of The Daily Eastern News.

Students aren’t interested in devoting time to the improvement of Eastern or the community. They are immature and self-involved, and too apathetic to vote, or even participate, in events that directly affect them and the places where they live, work and learn.

Sounds familiar, right? These are fairly common assessments of the student body at Eastern, and they often can be heard coming from the mouths of Charleston residents and faculty members.

And then irony strikes.

The Faculty Senate had to extend its petition deadline last week until 2 p.m. today for vacant positions because it only had four candidates for five seats.

In other words, there aren’t enough volunteers from the 450 – 500 Unit A faculty members at Eastern to completely fill the 15-person Faculty Senate by the elections on Wednesday and Thursday.

The senate is an important committee on campus. Its opinions factor heavily in administrative moves and in decisions made by the Board of Trustees. Senate members often generate creative solutions to existing problems and interesting proposals to avoid future obstacles.

And Faculty Senate is usually on target in gauging and relaying the feelings of faculty on campus, making it the voice of an extremely important segment of the campus community.

Psychology professor Gary Canivez offered to send an e-mail to all Unit A faculty members to notify them about the open seats, and perhaps that will solve the dilemma. Maybe not enough people knew about the upcoming elections, and the senate will get a flood of responses.

That’s unlikely, however. Faculty members at Eastern are generally very informed about the goings-on at the university, whether it’s through traditional means such as mail or formal announcements, or that old standby, the grapevine. They are especially attentive when it comes to situations that directly affect them, as well they should be.

So why no candidates? Perhaps no one has the time to donate – professors and instructors, after all, do handle a serious workload. Maybe they believe that Faculty Senate doesn’t serve its purpose well, or that its scope is too limited. Or maybe it’s simply because no one really cares enough to devote the time and energy.

That’s funny … most of those sound like the same reasons students give when they’re accused of being too cynical or passive when it comes to community involvement, the same reasons often dismissed outright by the very faculty members who apparently aren’t willing to do the same themselves.