The Review   is your paper

Every once in awhile, Hollywood puts a journalist on the silver screen. Since reporters don't wear cowboy hats, it's sometimes a little tricky to figure out which ones are the good guys.

Usually, you can start cheering when a reporter gets a door slammed in his face. It's a journalistic rite of passage to be ignored by people in power. A reporter knows he's asking the right questions if he can't get any answers.

This week, Review  reporters were asked to leave two meetings. The reporters weren't asked to leave by the administration. The reporters were asked to leave by students who didn't trust them.

Both reporters could have legitimately protested their expulsion. The courts have ruled that in most cases, the press cannot be excluded from events that are open to the general public. As a newspaper, we could have pressed to stay. As a student newspaper, we felt we had to leave because we were asked.

The Review  is a student newspaper. It is not our job to foil student activism. It is our job to report news objectively as possible so students can make informed decisions. Although a newspaper is not merely a megaphone, we provide an important forum for student discussion.

What bothers me is that many students don't see it that way. Students don't think of the Review  as a student newspaper. The Review  is seen as the enemy, or worse, a tool of the administration.

Our sole contact with the administration is weekly meetings. It's a little harder to arrange meetings with the student body, so it's important that students feel they can approach us.

We meet weekly with President Nancy Dye, Dean of the College Clayton Koppes and Dean of Student Life and Services Charlene Cole-Newkirk. We ask them to give us their take on campus events. We don't sit around with the deans and smoke cigars.

It is my goal as editor to make the Review  more of a student newspaper. There are college papers that try to appeal to their audience by running features about beer-drinking and Homecoming queens. I think we can become a student newspaper without dumbing down our stories.

The Review  isn't perfect. We've misquoted people in the past. We've missed some stories, and we've sensationalized other ones. Since Oberlin doesn't have a journalism department, students learn reporting by working for the Review.  That means we sometimes have to use inexperienced reporters who are bound to make mistakes. We try very hard to correct the mistakes we have made; we are more than receptive to complaints.

I'd encourage people to talk to us. If you have a complaint, or any question about why we do what we do, I'd love to talk to you. It's very important to me that we be a student newspaper. I hope the Review  becomes a very different paper than it has been in the past. There hasn't been much change at the Review  for quite awhile. I would like our coverage to become more diverse, and I would like students to remember that the Review  is their paper.

Despite its faults, the reality is that people read the Review.  Newspapers are very powerful; that's why a free press is a rarity. We think students could harness that power.

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