New year, new(s)paper
In the spirit of the new year, we as the Thresher’s editorial board have set a few resolutions and invite y’all as the readers to hold us accountable. Going forward, we want to be more transparent about our operations as well as maintaining the standards and policies we’ve created this year in the spirit of transparency.
Through our recent readership survey, many respondents raised questions about how our opinions section operates. Recognizing it as an area for improvement, we recently created an official opinion policy to help future writers and provide clear guidelines. The Thresher editorial board (marked on our masthead) write each week, but all other opinions published do not reflect the Thresher’s perspective. As stated in our policy, we do not reject opinion pieces, other than those that contain hate speech or represent a conflict of interest. While we always aim to further improvement, we hope that creating clear, explicit policies has helped us cover some ground.
Some conversations, like whether we should capitalize races, are ongoing. Currently, we capitalize all races (i.e. Black and White) in accordance to the Diversity Style Guide and at odds with the Associated Press Style Guide (widely used in journalism). We recognize that the backgrounds of our staff make us less equipped to answer questions like these and report on less-represented groups on campus. In the next decade, we will strive to hire more diverse staff, bring these conversations to our audience and solicit feedback where we might be lacking. As always, we aspire to hold ourselves accountable to our readers and be as transparent as possible.
More from The Rice Thresher
Help undocumented students close to home
President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders increasing border security measures and altering the daily lives of undocumented immigrants. The orders include expanding the use of immigration detention, bypassing immigration judges to fast-track deportations and auditing current federal programs that support allegedly removable immigrants.
Proposed constitutional changes — or power grab?
Four months ago, the Student Association formed a special committee to review its constitution. Two days ago, members of the committee presented their findings, suggesting four major changes to functionally, they say, streamline the SA’s efficiency — granting them “ultimate authority” over Blanket Tax Organizations like student media and Rice Program Council, and eliminating BTO perspectives from the committee that disburses some $300,000 every year.
Students should prioritize American patriotism
A threat to American values has grown rapidly in recent years: the anti-war movement’s shift to an anti-military stance, calling for divesting from, and in effect dismantling, the defense industrial base. The hyperbolic language found here should alarm Rice students because the U.S. military needs those same companies to develop critical technologies in the functioning of U.S. defense.
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