We make assumptions, and they destroy us > We're simply a generation that doesn’t use communication to solve our issues Ashley Ogilvie The Peak (Simon Fraser University) n the world of text messaging, we complain about the number of times meaning gets lost in translation—the number of times our “Kk” texts are perceived as anger, or when and when not to punctuate our sentences. Our circumstances of miscommunication are blamed on the short forms we send across text. Yet, unfortunately, this is not a technological problem. We make assumptions all the time and we don’t need a cell phone to do it. We are inherently sensitive, destined to take things too personally, and rarely inclined to go beyond our own perspectives. How many times do we read into somebody’s tone of voice? How many times do we twist the words they say into meaning something that maybe they don’t? How many times do we actually take the time to make sure we’re reading into things the right way? Miscommunication is one of our greatest flaws. We assume things and we don’t have the courage to figure them out. And the worst part is that these assumptions destroy us. They destroy our friendships and our perspectives on people; they Douglas Student Union elections bring destroy our willingness to fight for relationships to stay alive. In a sense, they fuel our isolation. We've criticized the way English classes force us to read between the lines and we’ve forgotten that we're naturals at it—that we use these tactics every single day and we've formed our world around the assumptions we've created on every kind of interaction. We live in a world where one sentence has a thousand meanings, and a slight change in pitch can suddenly make something intensely personal— record-breaking voter turnout > The importance of student knowledge and engagement Jamal Al-Bayaa Staff Writer In the aftermath of the Douglas Student Union (DSU) elections, Action was declared to have won a landslide victory against opposition party NexGen. The election broke the previous voter turnout record in the process, with 2,255 students (19.5 per cent of the entire student body) voting for one of the two parties. Now, that may not be as high as the 65 per cent voter turnout that any federal election can expect, but to be fair, Douglas College spends considerably less on advertising. Action’s members attribute the record turnout to a combination of hard work on their part, and the interest and engagement of students, which they believe increased once students learned more about the DSU and the elections. “Often,” Aran Armutlu, soon-to-be-treasurer, explained, “students would admit to not knowing what the DSU is. [...] This is something we need to change.” And for good reason! The DSU does a great deal for Douglas; it controls our funds, plans and goal sets for the college, and provides events and services, This student awareness is mission critical. However, there is the question of will it last, or will it turn out to be just another acid rain? If you’re not sure what | mean by “another acid rain,” well... that’s my point. Acid rain was the harbinger of the environmental movement. It was a huge scare for the whole world, grabbing the attention of every household, government office, and academic who would listen. For a while, it was major news and major conversation, but after a while people simply lost interest. What’s worse, that loss of interest seemed to apply to all environmentalism, not making another powerful resurgence until studies on global warming (as it was called at the time) pointed to the fact that manmade interventions in society are having negative consequences on the planet on a drastic scale. Similarly, Action worked diligently in their campaigning efforts, estimating that they targeted at us with harshness behind their syllables. A world where we fail to ask questions because our assumptions guide us to answers might not even exist; thus we perpetuate the bubble of toxicity we’ve created, of always assuming = spoke to “a few thousand students” in the two-week timeframe. They educated so many students on the five Ws of the DSU—and even went one step further in explaining the Image via thinkstock Image via thinkstock and never understanding or asking. Of never mending the bruises that have developed from these assumptions. Why are we prone to stop trying, to let broken relationships get the best of us? Because we assume the next will be like the last. We get stuck in a pattern and assume it will perpetuate itself, so we give up before there’s even been a chance to try. We avoid relationships, avoid their repairs, avoid conflict, we let our assumptions dictate every aspect of ours lives, and we will inevitably and irreparably hurt ourselves in the process. These days, any miscommunication is somehow linked to a text message we sent that we shouldn't have punctuated. As if miscommunication stems from Facebook messenger and other sources of online conversation—as though this technology can create the problems we so frequently bring up. Has technology worsened our communication? Or were we never that good in the first place? As a communications student, I’m wired to believe the overabundance and heavy reliance on technology is the cause of a lot of our problems. But it’s not. how. My hope for them is that they find a way to maintain that interest, turning themselves into more than just another acid rain. In order to do that, they’ll need to make it as easy as possible for students to get engaged. Decisions should be made public and in an accessible form, not disguised under bulky minutes that are as thick as textbooks and as formal as funerals. Genuine transparency is key here if they want to win the engagement of students. Further, students need to be asked questions about what they want to see happen at school. Better yet, engage them in the entire conversation: beginning, middle, and end. Engagement is a process of sometimes saying, “What would you like us to do, Douglas?” but always saying, “Here’s what we're going to do,” and “Here’s what we just did.” When students see that their comments are heard, they will do exactly what they did during the elections: get involved and make a difference.