Let me preface this letter by saying I have serious problems with the existence of the Student Association.
By virtue of being a student at Mississippi State University, I am forced into S.A. membership.
My rights to petition and protest the university (if I so chose) are thereby curtailed.
A lot of money is wasted by paying students to run what is a student organization (I don’t know of any other student leaders that enjoy that perk).
To top it off, the S.A. is ultimately powerless, as all of its decisions must be approved by a higher authority.
With that said, I am largely unconcerned with its elections, let alone its daily affairs, but what’s fair is fair and what’s ethical is ethical.
The April 2 edition of The Reflector was neither fair nor ethical in its coverage of the S.A. runoff elections.
It seems that the editorial staff of The Reflector wants Adam Telle as the next S.A. President.
Being a working journalist, I understand and appreciate that the failure of an executive officer to attend cabinet meetings and bogus claims of legislative work are certainly issues that must be reported.
However, I have very serious misgivings about the timing and placement of such reporting.
Any story on Juan McCullum’s job performance should have been published weeks or months ago, but definately not in the edition immediately prior to the runoff election.
The question of McCullum’s attendance at cabinet meetings should be answered with hard copy records, not the passing recollections of other members. As for his class obligations, that should be answered by the professor or his classmates.
Just about every student on this campus has had a professor who regularly keeps a class late.
On the issue of the add/drop legislation, that’s fair criticism, but it should’ve been done long before April 2.
Besides what appears to be biased reporting, the number of endorsements for Telle versus the number for McCullum was grossly unfair.
Yes, it is possible that more people wrote in supporing Telle, but many of those endorsements appear to have been solicited by The Reflector.
Yes, the endorsement of the now-elimated presidential candidates is newsworthy, but the same from the losing down ballot candidates is not.
It’s the same reason the Clarion-Ledger won’t do a story on who the losers in the congressional primaries want to win the U.S. presidency: they’re not candidates for anything anymore.
The public isn’t interested in what they think.
If The Reflector wants to be in the business of endorsing candidates, it should be done on the opinion page where readers expect it. Don’t fill the news pages with it.
Daniel Melder is a senior communication major.