dear hamline

Okay. I don't know if it's because I was abroad for a semester or what, but so many things frustrate me on a much deeper level than ever before, or maybe I've just learned to see them more clearly.

At risk of echoing Mel, people around here need to learn to not always blame other people for what they perceive as problems or issues on campus or in their lives or how they perceive certain statements made by others. If you have a problem with something someone says in class, SAY SO at the time!! Don't just complain about it later or talk to someone else about how it makes you feel bad or makes you uncomfortable, RAISE A CONSTRUCTIVE ARGUMENT against such statements/attitudes/whatever the hell is bothering you.

Working for the Oracle also frustrates me beyond all belief right now. Whatever coverage I give to "sensitive issues" on campus, someone is mad at me or thinks I have done a crappy job or feels I'm misrepresenting something. Well, that's because they are SENSITIVE ISSUES, and no matter WHAT I say or how objective I attempt to be about something or how much I try to listen to both sides of a story or argument and then do my best to represent that, I get lambasted. Which is why I do not want to be a journalist professionally. There is no way to discuss these issues in a manner by which SOMEONE isn't going to tell me that I've got it all wrong. No one, at the end of the day, is going to be happy, least of all me.

You see, the thing is, I do have very, very strong opinions regarding what's going on around campus. But I can't just write and publish whatever the hell I think and feel like writing about. That's called irresponsible, unobjective journalism. Yes, go ahead and scoff and smirk and make snide comments about an Oracle staffer referring to what she does as journalism. I am doing the best I can. By some people's standards, that is clearly not good enough, but when I hear two totally opposite accounts of an event and there is NO WAY to prove or disprove one of them, what good can possibly be achieved by writing anything about either account, when I (and no one else on campus except the people involved) cannot POSSIBLY judge what the truth is. He said/she said arguments do not work in newspapers. At least, they aren't supposed to.

As regards the recent City Pages article (in case you couldn't tell this is what I'm largely referring to), do I think that admin. at Hamline handled the situation perfectly? NO! Do I think the "compromise/resolution" that was reached is ideal, or even good? NO!!! But I can't just say, "Well, I think this sucks," and publish it. As far as I can tell, the administration followed the general guidelines for what went on. Should these vague guidelines be more specific and have more stipulations attached? Yeah, I think they should. I think students being able to go around and accuse professors of being racist or intolerant or whatever they choose to term it is disturbing and caustic and damaging to all involved parties. Can I research what exactly these rules are and interview people regarding how they might be improved to protect the interests of faculty and students and to keep even incidences in which students feel genuinely and maybe even occasionally rightfully upset ones that can be handled in a reasonable way that actually helps provide some good background and learning and construction toward deeper understanding of one another? Yes, I can. And that's what I'm trying to do. But although we are a professional staff, doing our best to put out a professional product, this office that we half-live in is still not our life.

I have other things happening. I have people dying in my family, I have friends with problems, I have classes and exams and independent studies and research projects and all kinds of shit to do besides this. People seem to have a hard time remembering that this paper, which we work on until 4 a.m. on Thursdays and skip class to interviewpeople for and get out of bed two hours early to work on that story we didn't have time to do earlier because we were studying for that midterm and working a double shift, is what we do ON TOP OF the five hundred million things we are all ALSO involved in. Does that sound like an excuse? probably, yeah. And to some extent it is.

We aren't perfect. We know we aren't perfect. But we also know we're trying our damndest and we are just as frustrated as everyone else when an issue or story doesn't come out the way we'd like it to. I would love to be able to sit down for hours to write a news piece, I would LOVE for that to be the only thing I have to do in my day. But it can't be, it just can't. Almost nothing I write comes out the way I want it to. I always want it to be better, stronger, more direct, more informative, sharper, etc. I feel that way about everything I write.

I seem to have lost track of where I was going with all of this. I seem to feel a little better having gotten this out of my system, however.