Keep professional integrity

Editor’s note: Spelling and grammatical errors in Letters to the Editor will no longer be corrected in print. They will still be edited for length, style and libelous material.

The Red & Black has displayed a severe lack of journalistic integrity in its coverage of alleged hazing over the past week.

While it is admirable that The Red & Black has chosen to take on hazing, they have done so at any cost, and have compromised their credibility as a newspaper in the process. The goal of any paper should be to stimulate discussion, and while The Red & Black has aimed to do so, several actions over the past week have instead shifted student discourse to a shared dislike of the paper, which distracts from the real issue.

Your paper encourages students to write letters and share their opinions on the issues. However, anyone who read Monday’s Mailbox would know exactly why students shy away from writing in. Your paper reserves the right to edit any submissions, so what was the point of acknowledging multiple spelling errors rather than simply correcting them? After all, Find and Replace is a fairly easy operation on Microsoft Word.

And then, when the student body expressed disgust towards your editorial bullying, you disabled the comments section of the Mailbox rather than allowing discussion to continue.

Further, in what capability as journalists do you have the authority to act as judge? So long as Pike is cooperating with the IFC and the police, that should be a satisfactory way to get the truth about what did or did not happen.

Your role as journalists should be to pursue leads and uncover the truth, not to manipulate facts in order to get the conclusion you so desperately want. Good journalism wins awards, desperation loses readership.

Jennifer Gilbert
Junior, Fairfax, Va.
Political science and geography

Editors’ letter ‘stunt was just low’

Upon reading Monday’s Mailbox by Rebecca McGee, I knew something was wrong.

Someone stood up for the fraternity in the Mercado situation and what happened to her? She was ridiculed, humiliated, and her opinion denigrated. How was all this done? Was it with angry words, snide comments, or libelous statements?

No, it was much easier – the editors purposefully chose not to edit her comments. Having been on the receiving end of their judicious use of red pens and cut and paste tech, I know that the editors not only have the power but sometimes the unnecessary desire to cut editorials to shreds.

Yet somehow, Ms. McGee didn’t deserve their attentions? Cruel. As with so many other current Red & Black features, that stunt was just low. Please, for the sake of taste and your readership, apologize.

We deserve better than this childishness.

Tiffany Umlauf
Graduate Student, Grovetown
Veterinary Medicine