As you may or may not have heard, the Manitoban won its recent referendum, in which we asked students to increase our levy from $3 to $4 per student per term.

To the 1,982 students who voted “yes,” the staff of the Manitoban would like to extend our most heartfelt “thank you.” We want to assure you that we will use the increase to our levy to improve the paper and give more U of M students the opportunity to gain experience in student journalism.

To the 1,189 people who voted “no,” we heard you too.

It would be easy for us to write you off and focus on the people who like us, but to do that would be ignoring more than a third of the U of M’s population (if these election results can be extrapolated to the entire undergraduate population).

By voting “no,” you told us that you don’t see value in our publication or that you do not feel it has an impact on your life. Our job now is to become a publication that you would proudly vote “yes” for in a future referendum. But therein lies the rub.

People who love us (or just like us) have no problem approaching us to tell us how great a job we’re doing, but the people who we are not serving well enough don’t do that too often.

Sure, we occasionally get angry letters-to-the-editor, but those are few and far between, and certainly not representative of the population who voted “no.”
What we need, if you are someone who believed that the Manitoban was not worth an extra $1 per term, is to hear from you. Tell us what you want in your newspaper — we are your paper after all.

Better yet, write for us.

Our mandate is to publish student writing, and we want to publish writing from all students, not just those who like us.

So please, if you voted “no” in the referendum, come tell us why, and tell us what we can do to better represent your interests.