Amidst any weekend events you may have participated in, university history was made on Friday. For one, our current president, Chris Brussalis, was officially inaugurated and had a ceremony to go with it. A ceremony for a university president has not happened here before, nor has Brussalis been inaugurated until now.

Our full-time faculty protesting for a fair contract in the backdrop of the celebration was impossible to ignore and was also history-making. Demonstrations with full time faculty have happened before, but not to this scale. The fact this celebration was the first of its kind also made the demonstration momentous

Of course, we want what is best for everyone involved, which is a renewed contract that guarantees pay comparable to other universities of our size, along with the promise that essential benefits don’t get downgraded or cut altogether.

The Globe has historically sided with labor unions during demonstrations or when news breaks about a dispute. Such is the case for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which we still stand by our Globe’s Point published on Mar. 27. It is worth noting that journalists on strike with the Post-Gazette are also members of the NewsGuild, which is the same labor union the full-time faculty are part of.

We also do not believe that the current administration is taking the school in the wrong direction. Questionable things happen, sure. But as students, we have a role in being able to speak up when a plan isn’t in our best interest or if a proposed policy will do more harm than good. We are given this role to speak out, so let’s use it.

At the same time, this does not mean we as journalists are lap dogs for the university administration. Such is the problem with our field – one crowd calls you a sellout for covering something positively, while the other decries the media as being all about bad news.

Truthfully, we’re not. Our role is to cover everything that happens on this campus, the Downtown community and the city of Pittsburgh in a fair, factual manner.

So, can you march with the faculty while also praising the work of the administration? Of course you can. This is not an issue where you must pick only one side and say that one answer is entirely correct or incorrect.

Of course, we will keep readers up to date on faculty union contract negotiations as well as the administrative side of the university.