Updated: June 5, 2016 at 9:40 p.m.
As you begin your college career on the most politically active campus in the country, you may realize that people here like to disagree and debate. The Hatchet’s editorial board is no different.
You’ll hear from the editorial board at The Hatchet weekly when we publish our paper. We, just like other students, debate the many issues we face on campus. We disagree with some University policies, decisions that student organizations make and what happens at our peer institutions.
The members of this board disagree with one another, too. But each week, the six of us try to come to a consensus on the topics we debate.
The goal of our staff editorials is to call students’ attention to issues that will have an impact on their experiences at GW. We believe it’s important to be active participants in our educations and our community. The editorial board’s opinion isn’t the final say on these topics, but we hope that readers can consider our point of view.
The editorial board consists of editors from different sections at The Hatchet, including opinions editor Melissa Holzberg, contributing opinions editor Irene Ly, managing director Eva Palmer, culture editor Grace Gannon, homepage editor Tyler Loveless and contributing sports editor Matt Cullen. Our editor in chief, Ellie Smith, sits in on our meetings to guide conversations and provide context but does not opine on the topic.
You’ll notice none of these editors cover news: Our newsroom and editorial board operate completely separately. If making our meetings and contributors separate wasn’t enough, the opinions team operates on a completely different floor of our townhouse on F Street.
We do our best to represent both The Hatchet and the University. We come from different parts of the country, represent different nationalities and share different life experiences, allowing us to all bring our own unique perspectives to discussions.
Every week, our editorial board gets together to discuss an issue on campus that students are buzzing about or to drive campus conversations toward noteworthy issues that some students may not yet be aware of.
Sometimes our editorials call on University officials to make a sweeping changes – like when we implored administrators to rescind Bill Cosby’s honorary degree. Sometimes we notice things happening at other universities and discuss how they could happen at GW, like when we considered how other schools host new student orientation.
Like any other group of friends or colleagues, we often do not agree with one another. Before every meeting, each member researches the topic, talks to experts and thinks about his or her experiences, so we approach the conversation from different perspectives. But we still try to seek a consensus, which becomes The Hatchet’s official opinion.
We want to encourage conversations with those who disagree with us, and we try to do that by scrutinizing topics that students should feel open to discussing with one another. Our hope is to provoke conversation, not end it. We are not here to claim our view is the only one or the right one. Rather, we want to share our opinion and start constructive dialogue on campus.
While our editorial board aims to come to a consensus each week, other students on campus do not always agree with us. Disagreeing with our editorial board is helpful. We encourage students who disagree with our editorials to write to us and have their own views published. The opinions section offers the chance for students, faculty, employees and unaffiliated readers to submit op-eds and letters to the editor that we will consider publishing online. We want to hear your opinion and understand the parts of issues that we may not understand ourselves.
We are excited to see what you’ll do here over the next four years, Class of 2020, and we’re ready for you to be part of our campus conversations.
The editorial board is composed of Hatchet staff members and operates separately from the newsroom. This week’s piece was written by opinions editor Melissa Holzberg and contributing opinions editor Irene Ly, based on discussions with managing director Eva Palmer, culture editor Grace Gannon, homepage editor Tyler Loveless and contributing sports editor Matt Cullen.
