Dead Week is a special time of the semester for all students. In the interest of ensuring we have ample time (or at least, more time than usual) to study for final exams and otherwise prepare for the final components of our grades — whether they be projects or papers — many years ago the Government of the Student Body decreed that “no student organization registered with the Student Organization Office may hold meetings or sponsor events without the expressed permission of designated staff member within Memorial Union” during the week before finals.

The humdrum of university administration, however, continues. Administrators, even ones as high ranking as President Steven Leath and Senior Vice President and Provost Jonathan Wickert, are still plugging away at their jobs.

However, Wednesday night they will take some time to make themselves available to students. At 7 p.m. in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union — at the same time and place as every other week’s GSB Senate meeting — Leath; Wickert; Warren Madden, senior vice president for business and finance; Tom Hill, senior vice president for student affairs; Rep. Lisa Heddens; and Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, among others, will hold a forum at which students can ask them, well, anything.

Given that it’s Dead Week and finals are looming and fast approaching, students will probably find the time inconvenient. Surely, however, so will all the administrators who have other things to do with their time — such as coordinate the functions of a Division I Research institution that enrolls 31,000 students and spends hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year. It would serve students well to make a point of attending, in order to educate themselves about the personalities who steer this institution along its course and their priorities. We know that some of us will take the opportunity.

Indeed, students deserve the opportunity. Students might occasionally catch a glimpse of one of Iowa State’s chief administrators in Beardshear Hall or walking outside, but their opportunities for conversation and mingling are sparse. With the dedication of one night, however, these public office holders — who, just as much as any elected official, from county supervisors on up to the president of the United States, have been granted a public trust — allow us to exercise our duties as citizens and participate in discussions that may very well go on to provide the foundation of some new policy or goal.

We would be remiss as Cyclones if we did not leap at the chance.