Letter From an Editor: Believe Them the First Time

On Wednesday, a few hours before this letter was scheduled to go to print, a reporter alerted me to an anonymous Missed Connections post that had just gone out to the whole student body. It said, and I’m quoting in full, “I am voting NO QUORUM because the Quest hasnt [sic] apologized for endangering literally our whole campus. In a moment when students and Palestinians and Muslims are being killed on campuses in America. Until the Quest issues a firm apology and Senate condemns them, I am voting NO QUORUM and I hope you will too. Shut their asses down until they take a minute to be people.”

In a way, reading this was a clarifying moment for me. It is, of course, shocking to be told that I and other Quest reporters are not people. But it also brings to mind a Maya Angelou quote I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” It is horribly refreshing, and informative, to hear someone be so honest with their intentions toward us, albeit anonymously. 

First, there is a refusal to recognize our humanity, which has been apparent — but never previously spoken aloud — in some of the more vicious messages we have received. Were that not enough, there’s also the suggestion that the student government “condemn” the student press, in an apparent attempt to exercise influence over its coverage. 

And finally, the meat of the proposal: that the student body undermine an ongoing election in order to “shut down” a campus newspaper. 

As a journalist, I shiver at the thought. But as a student, I am relieved to see the idea brought out into the light. The kernel of it has been clear to me in messages that tell me “we have the right to take [the Quest] back” or that say “im [sic] disgusted by the neutral position the article took.” 

Some of our critics have genuine concerns about journalistic practice. With them, we can have genuine conversations. But when people tell you that they want to shut down a newspaper — to take a publication with more than a century of history and topple it because they are “disgusted” by its neutrality — believe them the first time.

So it is a good thing that we can all go into this election clear-eyed about what is at stake — and I say that as someone who is no longer in the running, and who will be leaving the paper no matter what happens.

What will be on the ballot this semester is not who will edit the Quest, nor what policies it will follow. It is the Quest itself. It is the Quest I, and all of us, have worked to build this semester: a paper that belongs to no one, and that serves nothing less than the truth.

Be under no illusions. This is a democracy. If, as I fear, what you have said is what you really believe — that you are against neutral journalism, and willing to shut down the paper for standing by truthful reporting — then go ahead. Let the ink dry up and the thundering of the presses fall to silence. That is within your power. 

But it is also within your power to stand by this paper. To keep its doors open and its lights on. To choose for its editors one of the qualified candidates who have put in hours of work in the student publications office. That too is within your power.

So let us each vote for what we believe: I for the truth, and you — I fear — for control, and let the cards fall where they will.

In the words of The Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness.