Last week, in the light of the death of Osama bin Laden, I submitted a resolution thanking the troops for their sacrifices in fighting the War on Terror. During the discussion, a few senators, most notably, Benjy Leibowitz and Ala Salameh, expressed concern that my resolution could be misconstrued as bloodthirsty when it should celebrate the contributions of our troops and the opportunity for the world to move forward. I couldn’t agree more.

I spoke with Benjy and Ala, and accepted every word of every amendment proposed to my resolution. After this entire process, I can say that the bill I will submit to senate next week reflects my feelings even better than the original.

I have difficulty putting into words how disappointed I am by the quality of David Uberti’s blog post regarding this resolution. Instead of encouraging civil discourse or helping improve student life The Daily is pursuing sensationalist opinion writing to fight its weaning relevance on campus.

The Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics dictates that a journalist should “test the accuracy of information from all sources,” and “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.” In a display of incredible journalistic prowess, The Daily did absolutely none of these things. The blog section is not clearly labeled to explain that it does not represent the views of The Daily, accuracy was not thoroughly tested as neither Benjy, Ala, nor I were contacted by Uberti.

I offered to meet with anyone with concerns about my resolution several times during Senate. So why didn’t David at least shoot me an email? Maybe it was because he wasn’t even at the senate meeting he decided to comment on. Instead, he relied on the transcripts of an interview I gave to a Daily staffer. That is not what good journalism looks like.

Northwestern students need not apologize for in feeling a sense of satisfaction about this event’s significance for our generation and for our country. Maureen Dowd put it best when she said, “When college kids spontaneously streamed out Sunday night…they were the opposite of bloodthirsty: they were happy that one of the most certifiably evil figures of our time was no more.” To compare the Americans who celebrated the significance of Osama bin Laden’s death to the thousands in the Middle East who celebrated September 11th is despicable and insane.

It is the mandate of ASG to address the issues that students care about. This includes issues of national and global importance. These discussions always occur in addition to the on-campus issues that ASG addresses; To suggest that ASG is not focusing on the concrete issues we face ignores the contributions of people like Claire Lew and Jeremy Yablon, who often forgo sleep to make this campus a better place.

I invite David Uberti to join ASG. He will be given a project to address, and a team with which to address it. Perhaps then he will have more appreciation for the hard work these people do. The Daily ought to leave the problem solving to us, and we will leave the inferior reporting and incessant moralizing to The Daily.

-Isaac Hasson

Weinberg sophomore

SEED Senator