With a new year at the Collegiate Times comes a new way of getting things done. Of course, over the past 106 years, the mission has always been the same. We've been serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903.
This year, however, we raised this question: Have we adequately reflected all of the opinions of the Tech community for all of those years? Maybe we have, but this year we want to be even better at it.
Last year the CT received a lot of flak for dedicating too much coverage to some things and not enough to others. At the center of some of that conversation was the issue that came out right after Election Day. The CT staff decided to publish a photo of Tim Kaine, Mark Warner and Jim Webb with the headline "Hope Floats."
Although everyone knew that Barack Obama was historically elected the first African-American president, we still received criticism, and petitions from our readership about the lack of Obama coverage. Other sensitive issues, such as concealed carry, bring up a wide range of comments and feedback.
While that criticism didn't truly play a role in the reevaluation, we decided that we wanted to cover some things that maybe our staff isn't fully aware of.
That process started last year with extending invitations to student organizations on campus. We asked them to write columns for their newspaper.
With more than 600 student organizations on campus, and a lot of them housed in the same Squires Student Center as the CT offices, we held an open house before everyone got out of Blacksburg last summer.
We spoke with organizations and individuals alike about what topics meant the most to them. We wanted to give them an outlet to have these voices heard by a wide number of people.
And we hope this year we are going to succeed at this mission. In the second week of classes, we have already published two columns from student organizations. As public editor, I've attended meetings with several other student organizations that we've approached or have approached us. Hopefully this will allow more student orgs to open up to writing for the newspaper, because who doesn't like for his opinions to be heard?
Overall, newspapers are supposed to be unbiased, impartial and balanced reflections of everyday events. The news section will have a whole bunch of facts, but never an opinion. Features will have reviews of different entertainment pieces in addition to community and human interest stories. Sports will have recaps, previews and reports.
In the CT, anything that is an opinion is designated by the writer's name in a column footer, usually with a headshot. We want to make that very clear.
However, not only does the rest of the student body like its voices to be heard, but so do we. Contrary to popular belief, although we are a newspaper, we also voice our opinions in the CT.
Along with the redesign this year came more attention being drawn to a particular section of the opinions page. We like to call it "Your Views" and "Our Views."
Your Views are often regular columnists who write on a bi-weekly basis. Sometimes the writers are one-time guest columnists voicing their opinions. Your Views can also be the opinion of student organizations and letters to the editor.
Our Views is the staff editorial, written by the editorial board, which consists of our editor-in-chief, managing editors and opinions editor.
Another point we would like to make clear is that the editorial is the only part of the opinions page that reflects the opinions of our staff.
All in all, a good opinion will let you know what side its on, and it'll back it up with several good reasons. If you've ever taken a philosophy class, particularly Language and Logic, you'll be exposed to the fundamentals of arguments, having premises, conclusions and truth validity.
We're not trying to give a crash course on logic here, but we do maintain that whatever is published in our paper is logical, reasonable and not offensive.
Sometimes students and community members show initial interest in writing us columns, but then they think it may be overwhelming. I would personally like to clarify that while it is not a serious commitment, your opinion is an invaluable contribution.
Giving your opinion is one of the easiest things to do, and you help out our paper and our community when you provide a clear, concise and constructive opinion for publication.
If you are a student organization interested in writing a column, send an e-mail to studentorg@collegiatetimes.com for more information.
If you are a student, faculty member, community member, or anyone else send your thoughts to opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com for more information.
Any questions? E-mail me at publiceditor@collegiatetimes.com.