Arrow Editor responds to open letter

I am the editor of the Arrow and I wanted to respond to the Open Letter to the Southeast Arrow written by Kevin Windham. I am aware of the issues we have had and whenever we hear a complaint, we try to quickly and directly address them. I understand that the press, as a whole, does not have a great track record in giving black organizations proper representation, and that we have a responsibility to combat that.

The reason that we did the Sept. 9 centerspread was because IFC and Panhellenic recruitment was happening over that past week, and we wanted to cover those events. We did a story that was published online about IFC Bid Day and we did that centerspread to talk about Panhellenic recruitment. We had noticed that Panhellenic was actively discussing the issue of adding a new sorority throughout last year but they were unable to actually do so. This was also after IFC added a few fraternities over the past few years. We wanted to let readers know about what is involved in that process of adding a sorority to Panhellenic and why it is necessary as their number of members has increasingly grown.

I believe that the story was intended and was executed as a story about the specific issues that only the Panhellenic sororities on campus face right now. That is why the NPHC sororities were not included. However, reading the story again with the complaint in mind, I do see that we could have been clearer that this issue was about Panhellenic chapters and not NPHC fraternities and sororities, or other service and professional fraternities, on campus.

That same week, we had a reporter work on the story about Hump Day, but because of the weather, we pushed the story back a week so we could get video and pictures of the weekly event. When we did publish the story, there was an error in the headline. I do not recall who put the misspelled headline on the page, but I did not catch it so the blame is mine. In regards to the issue of us using the word ‘groups’ in the headline, the Arrow recently did an interview with DeAnte' Smith, director of Greek life and member of Alpha Phi Alpha, where he referred to NPHC organizations as groups. While I understand the idea behind using the term ‘Greeks’ instead of ‘groups,’ we only used the word as a synonym of organizations, so that the headline could fit in the space allotted.

As soon as we became aware of the error in our print project, we always intended to have a correction in our front-page briefs, which you will see in the next issue. We also are committed to continue to do stories about NPHC as we become aware of their specific events and issues, and there is one that has been in the works for a week that will be in this edition.

While we try our best to be professional and cover everything that happens on Southeast’s campus, the Arrow staff is relatively small. We are a learning facility and the Arrow has always had some bumps as we learn how to be media professionals. If you have any further concerns or questions, please feel free to contact me at editor@southeastarrow.com. I would be happy to meet with anyone to talk about the Arrow or the underlying issues surrounding diversity on campus in person. I already replied to Kevin directly within an hour of receiving the letter on Friday and hope to be able to further this conversation with him as well.