Happy week nine, Pioneers! It is hard to believe that we are almost one month until the end of the semester and that course registration for the summer and fall is already here. We highly encourage you to check in with all of your academic advisors to make sure you are on track and know what to do for course registration. Do not be afraid to ask for help.
This week we would like to do a brief follow-up on one of our stories last week, the Bison Book Bundle, which is a semesterly fee of $375 to cover all books for courses. In this article, quotes attributed to Provost Michael Soto are from a monthly faculty assembly meeting that occurred last Monday, March 4, which should have been stated in the original article. These meetings are public and open to all students, staff and faculty, and The Globe has always been given access to the Zoom links.
Since the monthly faculty assembly meetings occur on Mondays at 2:40, the same time as our layout sessions for the print editions, it has been hard for us to cover these meetings. Although The Globe doesn’t cover these meetings, they are still public and on the record for students to view.
The Globe is an independent newspaper and always will be. If an interview and meeting is on the record, all quotes are free to use. Sources do not get permission to view stories before publication nor do they get the opportunity to review and edit quotes. This is standard pracitcr for any news outlet, but we are always open to discussion. If you ever have any questions or thoughts on an article or photo, we would love to hear from you. It is our job to report the facts, but if something is inaccurate, we need to know. Publishing false information is not what The Globe ever wishes to do. But journalists are human, too. We are not perfect, and we make mistakes.
In that same vein, public meetings need to remain public. These meetings are often the only times when we get to see faculty closest to their true selves and hear discussions. When we set up interviews, it is easy for a source to be scripted, which we are not saying is necessarily wrong, but our job is to always capture the entire story and truth. We truly never have ill intent behind stories, and we want to establish trust with everyone in our Point Park community. Public meetings are essential to what we do and are a right for all students, staff and faculty to attend.