Champlain College Republicans Question Student Publication

To the staff of the “Champlain Current”:

As you are probably already aware of, we are the Champlain College Republicans. The name is pretty self-explanatory; but we do represent the silent majority and choose to promote intellectual, open and safe dialect on campus. Our organization and similar groups are important to the Champlain College community because it helps facilitate global awareness, as well as teach an ability to learn, understand and work with people that might not be on the same ideological wavelength.

We do take note, and are very displeased with the apparent bias tendencies that you publish monthly in the Champlain Current. It is a disservice to our community to continue to represent only one side; example being the article titled “Head to Head” written by Sarah Patterson.

In this article, you choose to represent only two Democratic Presidential candidates. The author attempts to say they are of significant importance only because one candidate is black and the other is a woman. However, the article also portrays these two Senators as the only viable Presidential candidates. The author completely neglects the other major political party, and we’d like to ask why.

Along with the Director of Instructional Development, Cinse Bonino; we too have heard “humming through the grapevine” that students, faculty and staff are being censored by your publication. We assumed that it was for political reasons, however your Editor-In Chief writes in response to Bonino’s letter: “We have no reason to censor or reject articles based on subject matter.” If that is the case, then why haven’t you published the submitted articles?

The Editor continues: “We are and will continue to be, very critical of our writers in terms of clarity, relevance, and writing skills.” That’s a very confusing statement considering that in the November issue alone, we alone counted over twenty grammar and spelling errors. One of the most obvious mistakes was that of the Advertising Manager’s title on page 2.

The article mentioned above is also poorly written. It changes tense several times, front-runners is misspelled, and it is clear that your design team chose to switch around the order in which things were printed without taking not to how the article had been organized.

So we ask again: why are you censoring the student body? Why do you feel it is up to you to decide what candidates voters should decide upon?

We implore you to raise the rhetoric and discussion level on campus, and also end you partisan leanings. We implore you to take a more objective stance and please, feel free to let us know how we can help with your transition to a more balanced publication. After all, it’s un-American to not let all opinions be heard.

Regards,
Champlain College Republicans