Ever wonder where that student fee you pay actually goes?

Ever wonder how many drinking tickets are given to students?

How about scholarships? How many are given throughout the university and how do amounts differ between athletics and academics?

When your teacher cancels class, do you wonder how far away they live from school and if the distance they have to commute affects the likelihood they’ll come to class?

These were all questions seven of us in a class called Computer-Assisted Reporting asked ourselves at the beginning of the semester.

We threw ourselves in with the passion to find the answers to these questions.

In this class, we picked these Eastern-related research topics and worked to acquire documents from the university using the Freedom of Information Act.

Though we’ve struggled in obtaining some of these records, it has been more of a hands-on learning experience than many of my other classes.

We’ve filed FOIA requests with the university, contacted the Illinois Attorney General and gotten advice from representatives at the Student Press Law Center.

During this process, we’ve sought information about student drinking tickets over random weeks, scholarship amounts both athletic and academic, student fee breakdowns and the distance teachers live from school.

We’ve had some successes and some failures in acquiring information so far, but all throughout the process we’ve learned about how the Freedom of Information Act can apply to universities.

Filing a Freedom of Information Act with a public body or university can lead to so many discoveries, both good and bad.

After learning how much can be acquired through the filing of a simple request, I got to wondering why students don’t take advantage of such an opportunity.

You’re a part of this university.

This is your information and you have a right to it.

Chances are, you’ve complained about parts of how it functions and chances are, there are parts of Eastern you adore.

Why not learn how and why Eastern functions the way it does?

Filling out a relatively simple information request through Eastern’s FOIA office at http://castle.eiu.edu/gcounsel/foia.php can lead to interesting discoveries.

There’s so much to learn about the administrative structure and all the behind-the-scenes functions of Eastern. I guarantee that the greater portion of students never even attempt to explore it.

Among many other things, we’ve learned that persistence is the ultimate key to acquiring desired information.

I know that if I gain nothing else from this class (though I already have), I will take away a renewed sense of pride in my First Amendment rights and the passion to exercise them to the best of my ability.

I would hope that my fellow peers at Eastern would care about their university and their educational process as much as I do.

Robyn Dexter is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or denopinions@gmail.com.