Coverage of GPSC elections unfair

The Chronicle’s April 14 article, “Election marred by absences,” focused on the absence of nominees to the Board of Trustees standing committees from the elections held for them last week.

The Chronicle reported that the Graduate and Professional Council’s e-mail to graduate and professional students announcing the meeting: “did not note that the general assembly would be voting on representatives or taking nominations for the Board of Trustees standing committee representatives.”   

The wording of the article attributes this statement to candidates who were interviewed. Regardless, a little investigation would have found that the e-mail in question explicitly stated in the meeting announcement, “we will cover the Board of Trustees elections.” For the sake of accuracy, this should have been noted. But apparently no effort was made to vet the original statement.

 The article could also have noted how these absences were addressed at the meeting, in which one representative stated that nominees who failed to do a little investigation into election details (or directly inquire to the executive board) would probably not make great representatives anyway. And as a counterpoint to the accusation that GPSC discourages participation by individuals with no prior involvement, the article could have noted that a fair number of such individuals were in fact in attendance at the elections—some as candidates, others as participants in discussion.

 Rather than reporting this, however, The Chronicle chose to sensationalize a minor issue (with a provocative front-page headline) at the expense of the election results (which were relegated to page six). Certainly the election could have been better advertised, but in the end, the motivated candidates who exerted a little effort either found their way to the meeting, or submitted a statement to be read in their absence. It’s unfortunate that the article did not have more to say about these candidates. It seems that The Chronicle was more interested in fabricating scandal than in fair reporting.