Judging by the amount of e-mail we’ve gotten over the past few days, people are quite fired up by some of the things we’ve written in Student Life about the just-completed Student Union elections. Although most of these letters are critical of Student Life and its staff, we always appreciate it when people write in to tell us what they’re thinking. Student Life and its opinion section (much like our University as a whole) exist to serve as a forum (hence the name) for the exchange of ideas, and letter writing is an integral part of this process.
At the same time, there has been a disturbing trend in some of the letters we’ve recently received-many of which are printed in today’s paper. Some of these evince a fundamental misunderstanding of Student Life and its mission.
In the interest, then, of openness, and also to set the record straight, what follows are explanations for some of our recent actions:
* It has been asked why we bother to become involved in SU elections. “What reputable news source blatantly attempts to sway elections?” asked one letter-writer. The glib answer is, “Every news organization that has ever endorsed a candidate, from the New York Times to the free suburban paper that’s tossed on your doorstep once a week at home.” More seriously, nearly every newspaper, as well as many other media organizations, chooses to have its editorial board interview candidates and consider issues, and then weigh in one way or another. Newspapers do this for a variety of reasons. For Student Life, one reason we choose to make endorsements is because our editorial board is afforded a unique opportunity to hear directly from the candidates in ways that most students are unable to or choose not to. Of course, students may disagree with our editorials and endorsements, and often do, and that is their prerogative. Student Life does not force anybody to vote in a particular manner; the editorial board simply states its opinion, and students may do with that what they please. You may disagree with us on whether we should issue endorsements, but ultimately, we believe that it is one of our most important duties.
* Some people, though, objected not to the fact that we wrote the editorials, but instead said that they were disrespectful. The truth is that we have great respect for Student Union and the role it and its executives play on campus. It is for this very reason that we choose to make candidate endorsements and cover SU elections-if we thought that SU were unimportant on this campus, we would not bother to cover it.
* We should note that we do try to cover many of these same issues in the news section of the paper as well as on the Forum pages. An important distinction exists, though, in the way we cover such stories in the two sections. In Forum, our editor-penned editorials are undoubtedly written with a point of view. However, as in any newspaper, our news articles are written by a staff of reporters to provide the facts, in context, without opinion. For instance, rereading our piece from last week about the SU executive compensation ballot issue reveals a fair article that presented both sides of the argument. In news, we absolutely do not try to “sway elections.”
* One letter-writer noted that we do not sign staff editorials. We leave them unsigned for the simple reason that we want them to reflect the opinion of the newspaper-not any individual’s opinion. Of course, it is not hard to ascertain whose opinions the editorials really reflect-the paper’s top editors. Perhaps, then, it is primarily out of symbolism that we leave our staff editorials nameless. It is also partly for the sake of tradition; no newspaper, to our knowledge, did or does sign the name of any individuals to its staff editorials.
If you would like to discuss these-or any other-issues with us further, please feel free to contact us via e-mail at editor@studlife.com.
Brendan Watson
Editor in Chief, 2003-2004
Jonathan Greenberger
Editor in Chief, 2004-2005