“I have come to the conclusion,” John Adams declares at the beginning of the play “1776,”that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress.” Replace the word “Congress” with the word “committee,” and you’d swear that John was talking about Georgetown University’s Media Board. (An aside: Yes, I know it’s Super Tuesday. But I refuse on principle to add to the mountain of fevered speculation over who’s going to win, where and by how much – predictions that will have a shelf life of about four and a half hours before the actual election returns render them totally irrelevant. Mostly, though, I’m just crestfallen that a certain lisping New Yorker won’t be breaking down the doors of history for speech-impaired Americans everywhere.) The politics I want to talk about today probably have a far more tangible effect on your everyday life, without your even knowing it: Georgetown campus politics. As you may (hopefully) have noticed, this newspaper recently launched a renewed public relations offensive to promote its longstanding goal of complete independence from Georgetown University. To fully appreciate why an independent student newspaper would be good for the university, though, you have to ask yourself a question: Are you satisfied with the range of voices expressed in student media right now? For starters, of course, you have THE HOYA, the fairly mainstream student newspaper whose opinion pages give voice to a diverse, if incomplete, cross section of the university community. The leading alternative is the Georgetown Voice, whose commentary has leaned left ever since that weekly newsmagazine sprung forth from anti-Vietnam fervor. And that’s pretty much it. There’s The Independent, which started as a conservative alternative to campus media but has since become a university-funded publication and lost any cohesive ideological underpinning (although a piece entitled “France Sucks” appeared in its first issue of the year). And there’s The Fire This Time, the magazine aimed at African American students, which was only able to publish one issue last semester due to financial and staffing shortages. Taken as a whole, Georgetown’s student media is woefully deficient in providing a platform for students to express a full spectrum of ideas. The uproar last fall over THE HOYA’s coverage of the Jena 6 incident provided as clear a testimonial as ever that there simply aren’t enough outlets on campus to foster a vigorous debate in print. So, what’s the reason for this? Well, like pretty much everything else at Georgetown, the root of the problem can probably be traced to a decision made by someone, somewhere, to form a committee – in this case, the Media Board. In the interest of full disclosure, I am, as John Adams would say, a “useless man” – that is, a student representative on the Media Board. But my purpose here is not to demonize the board; rather, I hope to show how the insatiable need of Georgetown administrators to exercise the tightest levels of control in every arena has hurt our student media. In the case of the Media Board, you have an unelected, largely unknown collection of students, faculty and administrators who meet roughly every three weeks for endless debate over individual spending requests from the media outlets they support, ranging from T-shirts to critical capital improvements. And for each week of lugubrious deliberation that drags on before the board informs organizations whether or not their requests have been approved, another week of publication time has been wasted. In short, it’s exactly the nightmare that John Adams (who, incidentally, fought for independence from a distant and unaccountable authority) described. If you need proof of the corrosive effect this is having on our student media, there’s no shortage of recent examples. The Georgetown Federalist, a right-of-center magazine that sprung up around two years ago, didn’t even bother trying to conform itself to the board’s restrictive guidelines, and instead receives its funding from a right-wing organization in Virginia. Ditto The Georgetown Heckler, the online humor magazine (it recently began publishing print editions) whose run-ins with administrators have made any long-term relationship with the university unlikely. A former editor of ours once argued on this page that the best way for Georgetown to invest in its student media would be to terminate less cost-effective publications (among print media, only THE HOYA brings in more money than it spends) and focus on improving more successful venues. I disagree. With a little luck, THE HOYA will probably be independent in the near future (like practically every other reputable student newspaper in the country). Once that happens, the Media Board’s dangerous mode of operation, in which THE HOYA’s surplus is merely transferred into the budgets of other publications, will be exposed. Not only does this punishing relationship with the Media Board remove any incentive for THE HOYA to turn a profit, but it has the same effect on every other student publication that seeks to gain a solid footing in our campus discourse. This has discouraged innovation to such a degree that only the Voice is able to publish regularly enough to maintain any relevance on campus (and, for what it’s worth, they have recently begun investing more in their long-term financial wellbeing). If the Media Board is truly interested in the future of campus media, it must reject its old, failed model of relying on one newspaper to fund all student media, and come up with a way to use its substantial annual allocation from the student activities fee to promote better media for every single Hoya. Oh, what the hell: Barack Obama will stun the nation by winning more total delegates than Hillary Clinton. The nomination fight will drag on for at least another month, but the Illinois senator will ultimately prevail. On the Republican side, the odious Mitt Romney will do surprisingly well in California, but Mike Huckabee’s presence on the ballot will split the anti-McCain vote and effectively hand the GOP nomination to the man from Arizona. Disagree with me? Feel free to give your own opinion in one of the many outlets available to you on the Hilltop. Oh, wait . Stephen Santulli is a senior in the College and a former editor in chief of The Hoya. He can be reached at santullithehoya.com. Thoughtcrime appears every other Tuesday.