The Thursday article “Students’ Association Mismanaging Money,” shows a lack of journalistic ethics, pseudo-investigative reporting and what could perhaps be termed slander. Let me begin by conceding that a few years ago, there were a number of problems that resulted in the Students’ Association account not passing the annual audit. The key phrase in this sentence is “a few years ago.” Contrast this with the word in the title “Mismanaging,” which is in the present tense. Now, let’s briefly apply this idea of present tense with specific claims made in the article.

It begins with “Until recently” and talks about an open safe and insinuates people could have just walked up and stolen money. While I can’t speak to the truthfulness of the open safe, the idea of “until recently” denotes past tense. Then, Carmody and Travers note that acts were taken “To improve the flawed system….university administrators imposed some changes.” Again, these are not on-going problems, but old errors that are being and have been solved. A third discrepancy tries to juxtapose a comment made by President Russ about not having money laying around against a residual fund that existed last year and has been whittled away. This juxtaposition fails to note the temporal difference between their claim and the present actuality.

Consider further that Travers and Carmody indict the Senate for having written bad debt that had to be paid off by this fund. Amazingly enough, this debt in part comes from the Chip Hiemenz administration, in which Mr. Travers served as Student Body Secretary. If this was a substantial problem that he was concerned about two years ago, why did he not take action when he was in power? So, the first criticism that the piece tries to confuse the reader into believing past problems are present is clearly warranted.

Let’s talk for a moment about some other issues. Carmody and Travers talked to Taylor Russ, Lauren Smith, Micah Nerio and Jennifer Jones – people who were in their office this year, during the attempts to solve these problems. Why didn’t they talk to relevant officials who were in office during this mismanagement like the comptrollers who were in office during the debacle, or Arlene Manthey, Chip Hiemenz, Liz Healy, Gabe Travers (oh wait…)? Their selective journalistic tactics have tried to reflect problems of the past on people that have tried to combat these problems in the present. Perhaps Mr. Travers was able to articulate so many of the problems because he was familiar with them during his time in office.

I guess it’s a bit hypocritical to complain about things your inaction helped perpetuate. But then again, if either he or Carmody had tried to raise a stink about these problems a few years ago, they might not presently be sporting those shiny M Award plaques.

Let me lastly note that I don’t know what will be running in the Friday edition’s diatribe against Senate’s finance procedures – I can only assume it will be more of the same. Let me say that apparently, Carmody served as Student Foundation Finance Chair. If she’s not happy about “who is getting rich” as the Thursday teaser suggests. SF gets a big bundle of money every year. If they didn’t need to get the financial allocations she requested during her tenure in that position, she lied to the Finance Committee, setting the precedent for this inaccurate, misleading story.

Moreover, both authors told their sources that the discussion was for class. Maybe this is an acceptable journalistic tactic to get a less guarded stream of information, but it is deceptive and dishonest. I hope that this “investigative reporting” helps your careers because it didn’t help your reputation here. Their article is shameful, dishonest and hypocritical.

(Editors note: Thursday’s and Friday’s articles were written as part of a class, but the writers informed the sources the final product was going to be pubilshed in The Daily Campus. We stand by the reporting.)

About the writers:

Ben Hatch is a senior political science major. He canbe reached at [email protected].

John Jose is a first-year economics, international studies and economics major. He can be reached at [email protected].