Vote for your peers, vote for your voice, in this week's ASUA elections

This week, the thing I have loved most about college is in your hands.

The Arizona Student Media fee will appear on the ballot in the Associated Students of the University of Arizona general election, held Tuesday and Wednesday. You will be asked to vote on a $3 fee that would go to KAMP Student Radio, UATV and the Arizona Daily Wildcat. You are being asked to shape the future of Arizona Student Media.

I want to tell you that your vote matters because ASUA elections are an opportunity to make sure student government is listening to you. But if I were being wholly honest, your vote matters to me because Arizona Student Media matters to me.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be when I started college. The Daily Wildcat gave me an anchor to the UA, and as I worked my way up to become editor-in-chief, the Daily Wildcat kept me in place.

But I’m not asking you to vote for me and my job. I plan to graduate in May, and the Arizona Student Media fee would have no direct impact on my own future.

I’m asking you to vote for a vital part of the campus community.

Who else besides the Daily Wildcat would seek out the most loyal of Arizona men’s basketball fans, a familiar face to the ZonaZoo, and ask her why she’s been a season ticket holder for the last 45 years?

Who else is paying attention to the lawsuit filed against the Arizona Board of Regents — the same board that sets your tuition each spring — by a student statewide lobbying organization that aims to work on your behalf?

Who else aims to tell the stories of 40,000 students on campus, in order to keep them informed and engaged with their own community?

And that’s just one branch of student media. If you live in Arizona-Sonora Residence Hall, the only broadcast station that covers the UA campus works from a small studio space just a few steps from your room.

If you walk by the UA Mall on Wednesday afternoons, you’ve probably heard the DJs of the UA’s only radio station hosting shows from the Mall.

I’ve dedicated three years of countless missed classes, sacrificed weekends and late nights to student media, and I know of 300 people who have done the same for the Wildcat, KAMP or UATV. It’s crazy, but it’s worth it.

Maybe it’s the caffeine-induced spike in my heart rate, but I’m blown away every day by the stories my people have produced about this campus, about students and faculty and community members whom I would have never known about otherwise.

When I say “my people,” I mean it. The 300 or so employees and volunteers behind the Arizona Daily Wildcat, KAMP Student Radio and UATV are the kind of people I wanted to meet when I got to college: They are ambitious and passionate and brave. I am humbled by the energy they bring to everything they do.

Voting yes on the Arizona Student Media fee is voting for 300 of your peers, and it’s voting for people who don’t even attend the UA yet but hope to work in student media. And it’s voting for yourself, because you deserve a voice on this campus.

— Kristina Bui is the editor-in-chief of the Arizona Daily Wildcat. She can be reached at editor@wildcat.arizona.edu or on Twitter via @kbui1.