Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Union of Students of the University of Alaska Anchorage

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. -- Longhair\^talk 06:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Union of Students of the University of Alaska Anchorage

Union of Students of the University of Alaska Anchorage (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

This is a non-notable student government and should either be deleted or redirected to the main university article. There have been zero mentions of this student government in the Anchorage Daily News, the city's only major newspaper. I brought this here in part because I would like to open discussion about the notability of student governments so I can redirect other non-notable university student governments to the main university articles. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep pending sourcing/rewrite - University student governments are inherently notable and there are dozens of extant articles on student unions around the world; see Associated Students of the University of California, Cambridge University Students' Union, Hull University Union, Uppsala Student Union, Georgetown University Student Association, University of Alberta Students' Union, etc. See Category:Students' unions and Category:Students' unions by country.

• Inherently notable? That seems over-the-top, considering that many student governments don't do much of anything. How should notability of a student government be measured? If it is not covered by anyone outside the school, I don't know Wikipedia should take notice of it. This student government has never been mentioned by any news source outside the school, which one might imagine would happen if it were doing anything important. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, to say that it's never been mentioned outside the school is certainly false. There is at least one (minor) reference in mainstream media, as the USUAA co-sponsored a political debate between Tony Knowles and Lisa Murkowski in 2004. While that reference (now in the article) is certainly not the world's largest report, but it does belie the assertion that the USUAA has never done anything of interest. It took a 10-second Google search to find it. What may be uncovered in a scholarly search at the UAF library is yet to be seen. FCYTravis (talk) 21:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Furthermore, you assert that things that happen at universities, if not noticed by the broader world, are never encyclopedic. I would vehemently disagree, because even if not noticed by "outside" sources, universities themselves are important communities of interest. What is of interest to the university or college, is of interest to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people - students, alumni, local residents, faculty, staff, administrators, etc. This is the very point of university newspapers: they cover their communities in greater depth and detail than the mainstream media do. I know of no general consensus on Wikipedia which defines what happens inside a university as unencyclopedic. I would argue that what goes on inside a university is more encyclopedic than many things we cover in even greater detail. Universities are the engines of learning, research and self-discovery for our world, and Wikipedia should have more information about them, not less. What is important to Wikipedia is the existence of verifiable, reliable sources. If we have those, we can write an article about it. Universities generally produce plenty of reliable sources. FCYTravis (talk) 21:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

• Student governments are permanent, have major, sometimes multi-million-dollar budgets funded by mandatory student fees, partake in activist activities, manage student life and are generally a major part of the university community. The current state of the article is unreferenced; I will work on that this weekend. I have stated on the talk page my intentions to adopt this article and improve it. Deletion is not the answer here. FCYTravis (talk) 19:15, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Obviously keep if more verifiable content is added per Mr. Travis above, otherwise a merge to the UAA article would be reasonable, though not necessary. In no case should this be deleted outright, so I consider this AFD nomination frivolous. — CharlotteWebb 19:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I would add that a merge would be perfectly logical if we can't find anything else - but I'm pretty sure we can go beyond what's there. There is definitely non-trivial coverage in the college newspaper, which conveniently happens to be online. I'm studying at Alaska's flagship university up in Squarebanks, so I'll go to the Rasmuson Library this weekend and do a search on the UAF/UAA library collections to see if I can dig up any offline, dead-tree sources. FCYTravis (talk) 19:33, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep pending rewrite by FCYTravis. Capitalistroadster (talk) 19:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep the main student organisation of a large university of a well known college is notable, if there is enough material--as there is in this case.DGG (talk) 09:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.