Unfortunately, student athletes and athletic communications are thoroughly reticent when it comes to commenting on a teammate's involvement in off-campus incidents. Such was the case when The Spectrum tried several times to get basic information on the Scott Pettigrew stabbing from the incident's few primary witnesses.
Kept in the dark, the editorial board was left to its questions, all of which were unanswerable but fair, and several of which many UB students were asking themselves as well.
Two specific points in the editorial, which had attempted to make a larger point, seemed to stick out to some student athletes. They took the sentences out of context, and one disgruntled athlete came into the Spectrum office to voice dissent.
When one reads an editorial, he or she must remember that it expresses an opinion and is not a hard news story. In that respect, we are not subject to libel. An editorial is a collectively transcribed opinion piece on how a newspaper feels about a divisive issue.
So to put it all together, we decided that the important questions, which student athletics refused to answer, were worthy of print, and we only regret that they were taken the wrong way.
But on the day following that issue of The Spectrum, a student athlete informed us that a number of fellow student athletes were taking action against the editorial by removing stacks of The Spectrum and throwing them in the garbage.
Indeed, last Thursday afternoon, The Spectrum was nowhere to be found in the Student Union.
Not only is such behavior immature and immoral, but it is also a crime.
Both censorship of the free press and newspaper theft in this manner can be prosecuted as criminal and civil offenses, as violators constrict freedom of speech and cost the publication a good bit of money.
The Spectrum dedicates an entire section of each paper, as well as a full staff of writers, to UB athletics. Almost wholly, their reporting paints the Bulls athletic teams in as bright a fashion as possible.
We also spend hours of time and thousands of dollars putting out hard copies of the campus news.
The contentious editorial was as reasonable as an opinion piece can be. It pointed no accusatory finger at anyone; it only explored the possibilities and asked necessary questions.
Such a disrespectful and spiteful reaction was undeserved, as we are entitled to our opinion as a news staff. It was an intelligent conversation that raised important topics.
It helps to read a newspaper article, column or editorial in its entirety in order to gain a sense of its context. The editorial, along with the sensitive sentences that created such tension, posed legitimate questions that may have inadvertently forwarded our united opinion, for which we need not apologize.
