Dear TSV,

I wanted very much to weigh in online to your poll about your controversial editorial cartoon in the last issue, but your poll button doesn’t seem to record votes in any browser I tried. Nor can I figure out how to leave a comment since when I try to do so, the window shifts away from the article I tried to comment on. So I am resorting to email.

I imagine you have heard a lot about the cartoon, as well you should. Your cartoonist appears to have a chip on his shoulder that prevents him from seeing all the prioritization of students everywhere on this campus. What other campus deliberately sought out ways to give away $250,000 in scholarships, previously untapped, last year? What other college put a food pantry on its campus to attend to the needs of students who are food-insecure? Can you find another campus that has a SparkPoint Center that connects students to benefits to enable them to be successful? How many science departments host a research symposium just for their students? How many campuses have fought tooth and nail to maintain child care services and learning center services, knowing how vital those things are to students? How many campuses have students in voting positions on key shared governance committees such as the College Governance Council? Yet, you choose to look at a few presentation events at random and project them as indicative of a culture of student exclusion. Are you really so blind? Ah, but then, you had to go a bit further and deliberately slander one of the best presidents any community college has ever had.

Yes, the Success Summit had a price ticket. Summits and other conferences typically have fees attached. Had you done some investigation, you may have found ways for students to be involved in that summit at little to no cost. The Cornell West event indeed had very little coverage prior to its date, and your editorial in this newest issue attempts to acknowledge that a search for Cornell West only turned up the news of the cancelled even from last Spring. Did your staff bother to investigate that information? Evidently not, because had they done so, they would have learned that the Spring event was sold out, and the previous ticket-holders were honored before releasing any new tickets to anyone else. But instead of being good journalists, you chose to slander the college president by showing her as ego-driven. You have no idea what this woman has done for countless students in her many years as an educator and administrator, yet you chose one misunderstood event to slander her good name and work in the space of a few days of zero fact-finding. You chose to ignore truth when it could have been easily found with a little investigation, and that is an egregious sin against journalism. What shameful disregard for journalistic accuracy. What a sad state of affairs future journalism will be with you at the helm of it.

I used to bring copies of the Skyline View to my classroom to use in classroom activities. I think I will wait to do so again until a journalism staff with integrity returns. Until then, I sincerely hope you can use this opportunity to examine your obligation in reporting the truth.

Sincerely, Leigh Anne Shaw
Associate Professor, English for Speakers of Other Languages
Coordinator, English Language Institute
Secretary, Skyline College Academic Senate