Before beginning this week’s Editorial, we would like to briefly address the absence of the column from last week’s paper. Due to the amount of content submitted to our Opinions section, we felt it was best to forgo the Editorial for the week.
This week, we want to address issues around diversity and inclusion in campus clubs and organizations. Over the past few weeks, many discussions have been had across campus regarding how different groups may or may not be doing their best to be inclusive of different members of the St. Lawrence community.
During this time, many students have submitted articles to us to share their views on which organizations have done well with this, and which have fallen short. Many of these organizations have, in turn, issued responses to these concerns.
Although we play a central role in this dialogue by printing these sentiments, it seems that there hasn’t been much attention put on our own efforts. However, we are not without our own flaws. As such, we are going to address some possible areas of concern within our own organization, in an effort to be up-front.
First and foremost, we acknowledge that our Editorial Staff, from the Executive Board through our copy editing staff, is severely lacking in diversity; we are predominantly white. This does not come from intention or design, but that does not excuse this glaring shortcoming.
There could be a number of reasons why this issue exists–it may not be the result of one particular practice, but a combination of factors. Nonetheless, this is something we need to be better about, and are going to work to improve on in the coming years.
The process of adding members to our editorial board, as described in our constitution, is fairly straightforward. Section editors are asked to choose their successors from their staff of writers, looking for students who write consistently and show a genuine commitment and enthusiasm for The Hill News.
These writers are invited to sit in on editorial meetings and join us on Wednesday nights to observe how the paper is made, from planning the stories for the week to the actual designing of each page.
As for our writing staff, we are always looking for students to write for us. Our writers lists are constantly growing, and we encourage all students who are interested in submitting a story to do so. Students are allowed to submit as much as they would like, be it a one-time submission or joining us as a Staff Writer.
That being said, we understand that our goal may not be clear based on how we are seen. Being made up of mostly white students, we acknowledge that non-white students may not feel comfortable submitting to us. However, we are always looking to hear from students from different backgrounds and cultures in the St. Lawrence community. We are a student newspaper, and our priority is to share and express the viewpoints and experiences of the students of St. Lawrence.
With this column, we acknowledge that we have our own work to do to be more inclusive. This needs to be an active process on our part. Keeping our submission policy open is a start, but more needs to be done. While we believe our writing staff to be fairly diverse, as some of our content reflects, we agree there is still more to be done, especially regarding our Editorial Board. Going forward, our goal is to reach out more directly to different student groups who represent the diverse communities of St. Lawrence, and encourage them to join us in writing and exploring different aspects of the university’s culture.
We hope that this column clearly expresses our interest in representing the whole of St. Lawrence’s student body. Up to this point, we have tried to limit the number of obstacles to including students in our work. However, there is still much work to be done on our part. Our hope is that our goals and intentions are now clear, and that we can continue to build a stronger relationship with all of the St. Lawrence community.
-The Hill News Editorial Board