Letter to the Editors: Dec. 10, 2019
I want to first say how much I respect your newspaper. It has a history that is legendary and the current staff does an excellent job living into that legacy. I am blown away by the insight and courage of the staff. I went to bat for the Prowler years ago when it was being attacked by the community.
However, I am going to express my disappointment with the opinion editorial written in the most recent Prowler about ASG falling short on inclusiveness week. There are two major issues I have with the article.
First, it appears the authors never interviewed an ASG member. I know that the idea of the opinion editorial genre is to critique and, generally, those who are being criticized are not consulted for the article. However, in an article about inclusiveness, might this part of the genre be overlooked? It would have given a lot more merit to the article.
Secondly, the article critiques the ASG for its delivery during this week, however, when I look through this week’s paper, I am underwhelmed by the amount of articles on directly related to inclusiveness. Don’t get me wrong, there are great articles in this week’s paper, but you brought up in the editorial transgender students, Sparkles, and other groups, yet in the paper this week was no article about Sparkles or transgender students. Did you not know that Inclusive Week was coming up? Did you, and simply not dedicate most of the paper to the subject? I am not saying you have to dedicate the whole issue to the topic, but it seems disingenuine to be so critical and yet not have much in your paper about inclusiveness for a week that you deem so important. From what I observed, ASG did a lot more for the week of inclusiveness than the Prowler. Of course, the press must be critical, but to me, this article was hypocritical. If you are going to talk the talk, then your paper must walk the walk. Show us what inclusiveness looks like in your paper if it is so important for you during this particular week. I know you have had articles that have addressed inclusiveness in the past, but ASG has done many events over the years to make students feel included (ice cream at lunch for birthdays and many activities throughout the school year).
I certainly think there were great suggestions in the article and certainly there is always room for improvement on this event. However, I think this article would have been better as a feature piece rather than an opinion article and within that article put in the suggestions. You could have highlighted what other schools are doing and maybe that would spark ideas for the future of this important week. Maybe the Prowler could publish an entire paper on the subject next year at this time. Maybe instead of critiquing ASG, the Prowler could work with ASG to come up with ideas.
I know how hard you as a newspaper staff work. I know the hours you keep – the late nights, the pressure of deadlines. ASG has many late nights, very early mornings, and big deadlines too. They work on weekends and during vacation. I know this personally. My son is in the class and I am dropping him off and picking him up from all these events. ASG worked hard on inclusiveness week.
I write this not to be harsh, but to promote unity on campus. I believe the intentions of the article were good, but the delivery seemed antithetical to its purpose. ASG should have been included for input in this article and thus the article comes down on the divisive side from my point of view. There is so much divisiveness in our world and divisiveness, to me, is the opposite of inclusiveness.
Eric Lindroth
NPHS Photography Teacher
