Look again.

That’s what my mother told me when, nearly in tears, I talked to her on Wednesday afternoon. Less than 72 hours before I was supposed to leave the country, I realized my passport was missing.

Knowing I would need time to clear my head and prepare for the real world after nearly seven months as editor in chief of THE HOYA, I decided back in August to put some of my summer earnings toward a vacation in Australia over Thanksgiving break.

By some awful twist of fate, sometime between Homecoming weekend and 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, just after Tuesday’s issue was completed, I lost the document that would allow me entry into life’s next chapter.

Naturally, I tore apart my Village B apartment – four times, in fact. Three times out of sheer panic but, once I calmed down, it was one more time just because Mommy said so.

It harkened me back to a T-shirt my mom used to have: “Because I’m the mom, that’s why.”

I doubted the truth of that claim from the first moment I laid eyes on it. Blind following of any cause seemed foolish; blind following of a T-shirt – probably one purchased at the Jersey shore – seemed downright irresponsible.

It’s that skepticism of anything and everything that fuels a journalist. Never is he satisfied with any amount of information. He craves facts, figures and opinions like a five-year-old eating ice cream directly out of a half-gallon tub. Even when the container is empty and there’s nothing more to take in, a yearning sensation lingers, telling him:

Look again.

As editors, the staff members of THE HOYA have a keen understanding of accountability. Over time, media outlets have come to appreciate their public service – holding leaders and elected officials accountable for their actions.

Accountability plays a direct role in a newspaper’s daily operations too. As a conduit for disseminating information to the campus community, we must present every side of every issue in an unbiased light, and we must answer to the public for our mistakes and shortcomings.

Unfortunately, THE HOYA does not have an ombudsman or a public editor to call us out when coverage or reporting goes astray. That responsibility is left to community members themselves. We open the second and third pages of every issue to our readers, allowing you to put pen to paper to criticize, complement or drive the course of debate.

We strive day-in, day-out to do our best, but we are not professionals. We are students. We volunteer our time – some of us 50-plus hours a week – to continue a tradition, to provide a service, to produce a newspaper for which Georgetown University can be proud.

The same logic fuels our argument that THE HOYA should be completely independent from the university. Every editor feels a set of burdens – the burden of 85 years of history, the burden of not letting down fellow students, the burden of raising the bar.

When considering accountability in light of the fact that THE HOYA is not an independent institution, a curious twist emerges: While managed by students, the decision-making power of the Georgetown student press ultimately belongs to the university. Yet those same publications are also charged with holding university officials accountable. Any enlightened individual will recognize the inherent conflict of interests.

For the past year and a half, that is what the leaders of THE HOYA have been requesting of administrators – to reassess the newspaper’s relationship with the university. In essence, to take the facts and to .

Look again.

Opportunities for improvement lurk around Georgetown’s every corner; some are directly before us. I urge my fellow students who work through their own clubs, community organizations, religious groups or political parties to seize upon these chances for progress. Over the course of seven semesters, I have learned that this is the essence of Georgetown.

Whether you accept it or not, it is the responsibility of every member of this community to look at our university with a critical eye. When institutions don’t work, we transform them. When policies don’t work, we change them. We must strive for the best – in our organizations, at our university, in our lives.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Self Reliance.” His words remind us not to accept the status quo for what it is. How things are now is not how things have to be.

It doesn’t take a skeptical journalist to poke holes in the argument, “Because I’m the mom.” But in this case, she was merely reminding me of something I already knew.

To be absolutely certain, it was worth another look.

Michael Kurdyla is a senior in the College and outgoing editor in chief of THE HOYA.