Correction added

It’s good to know the student body is represented by a team of sound-minded individuals who sacrifice four hours out of their Wednesdays to deliberate over how to best serve Eastern.

It’s nice to know these elected officials have our best interests at heart and use their time diligently and resourcefully.

These people waste no time getting right to the heart of the matter and debate heatedly over the best way to approach pressing issues of grave concern to Eastern’s student body.

This week’s topic: Student Senate dress code.

Wait, what?

The senate spent a fairly large chunk of time last Wednesday debating whether senate members should wear more professional attire during meetings and debated furiously over the subject as if the fate of the entire student body depended on wearing a collared shirt and tie.

The student body has more pressing issues that need to be dealt with before the senate launches into ridiculous arguments about dress code.

Although some issues are left in the care of Eastern’s administration and are handled accordingly, the senate could potentially be the arbiter of the student body.

Recently, Pepsi installed a new soft drink machine in the atrium of Buzzard Hall. This new machine has no Panther Card reader. It doesn’t even have space for the new hardware to be installed. To put it bluntly, the Panther Cards are useless with this machine.

Education majors make up about 60 percent of the student body and spend most of their time in Buzzard along with journalism majors.

To Pepsi, this should be a veritable goldmine, a chance to cash in on the majority of the student body.

Card readers are equally beneficial to students as they provide a more convenient payment method than cash or coins.

Additionally, with a majority of students spending time in Buzzard, it would make sense to include a cash-to-chip machine so students – especially off-campus students – wouldn’t have to cross campus to any given residential hall to put money on their Panther Cards.

Issues like these should be at the top of the senate’s list of priorities, but instead they choose to argue over how to dress up for meetings.

We urge Student Senate to act on behalf of the student body and push the administration to replace this machine and install cash-to-chip readers in Buzzard.

This Wednesday, let’s talk about the issues that matter most.

The editorial is the majority opinion of The DEN editorial board. Reach the opinions editor at: [email protected].