Do you remember the day you learned one of your parents had your favorite pet put to sleep weeks or months, if not years, earlier?

Many of us lived the nightmare: Your favorite friend-on-all-fours was sent to “the farm.” Only when pressed about Lucky’s fate did your parents decide you were ready to know the truth.

But this isn’t a call to be better parents.

Transparency, in fact, is a wonderful thing.

When parents failed to live up to their own standards of speaking the truth, many of you asked yourselves, “Why didn’t they just tell me?”

You probably felt stings of betrayal and confusion, which is exactly what we’re hoping to avoid.

The Faculty Senate is, for the second time in as many years, attempting to simplify its Open Meetings policy. The changes include removing outdated items and procedures no one follows.

We’re all for simplifying things, but, as with any reduction, you have to ask yourself whether you’re about to lose anything.

According to the faculty handbook, the document serves to inform faculty of implications state and federal laws and actions taken by the Board of Regents and university administrators may have on academics and faculty. The document claims it contains “references to other sources for further information” in order to keep faculty well-informed, presumably.

And that’s why we oppose the Senate’s motion to completely remove any hint of Iowa Code Chapters 21 and 22, which dictate Iowa’s Open Meetings and Open Records law.

The reformed policy states “the University promotes the principle of open meetings,” but if you’re new to leading or recording meetings and you want to know the ethics behind the thing, you should know the high standards of transparency expected by the state, faculty, staff and students you’re serving.

A mention of Chapters 21 and 22 would do that without burning space or wasting words.

Because, at the end of the day, all we’re asking is that you don’t euthanize our right to know.