Every year, as a student, you contribute to the funding of student organizations. That’s right, $25 comes out of your tuition to help student organizations, new and old, grow.

As a directly funded organization, The Oakland Post receives 7 percent of student activities funding each year. Other directly funded groups are the Oakland University Student Congress, Student Video Productions, WXOU Radio, club sports, the Student Life Lecture Board, and the Student Program Board. What’s left is split among other organizations by the Student Activities Funding Board.

While we can’t tell you exactly what happens to all of that money because it’s impossible to keep tabs on what every single campus organization is doing, we can tell you what we’re doing with our share. It’s time for a bit of shameless self-promotion.

Your money goes to help pay our staff of 30. That’s not figuring unpaid interns who also contribute to the task of creating this newspaper every week. We don’t have the most funding, but your dollars reach more student paychecks because of our status as the student organization with the largest staff.

We’ve been hard at work over the summer improving the product that you’re now reading, whether in print or online. Our goal is to give you the most for your money.

We want to represent OU in the best way, whether it’s by winning more awards on the state and national level, or by featuring the faces of OU’s best. Also, who doesn’t like more pictures and color?

We have been working tirelessly on the redesign of the newspaper since April and hope you enjoy the aesthetically pleasing new layout that provides for maximum readability. You’ll find that we’ll be featuring more campus organizations, teams and faces.

In this issue, pages 14 and 15 feature a guide to Kresge Library, a valuable campus resource. More campus guides are planned for the coming weeks. If you’re in a hurry, sidebars in every section give you a quick dose of news on the go. If you’re really in a hurry, you can scan headlines on our website or through our Twitter account at www.twitter.com/theoaklandpost.

Our website, www.oaklandpostonline.com, also has a new look in order to complete our design overhaul. There, you’ll find stories that have been in print as well as web exclusives and photos that didn’t make it into the paper.

Want to see more or less of something in your student newspaper? Let us know by sending an e-mail to [email protected]. We work for you and you can also tell us how we’re doing via Twitter or Facebook at www.facebook.com/theoakpost.

In the end, we want to return that $1.75 each student gives to us each year. We strive to give it back to you in the form of a quality independent student newspaper you can enjoy.

This is your tuition at work. It does not go toward special interest projects because our interest lies in the campus community. That means everything we spend money on goes right back into the product, whether it be new computers to better produce the paper or the travel costs to a development conference, not an item only we can use.

Our newly redesigned newspaper says it all. We’d like to welcome back those returning to our campus community and wholly welcome those new to campus by helping you out as much as possible and letting you know that we are here in 61 Oakland Center.

Swing by to say hi, hang out for a bit and drink a cup of coffee, meet our staff or even join our staff. You’re always welcome.