Don’t take a bite out of context
As a journalist, I take it very personally when anyone takes an issue or a statement out of context. Context is essential for understanding the complexities of any controversial subject, including the appointment of a university president.
The major daily newspaper in Colorado Springs, The Gazette, ran an editorial on Feb. 23 titled “Degrees of Value” discussing the debate over the potential hiring of Bruce Benson as president of the University of Colorado system. In it, they say that Benson will prove to be a good choice and those who criticized his qualifications were recklessly exaggerating their claims.
“It’s good to remind the inmates that they don’t run the asylum,” The Gazette wrote. “The appointment of Bruce Benson as president of the University of Colorado serves as the latest reminder. More specifically, it says this: The University of Colorado, even the Boulder campus, doesn’t belong to self-important ideologues in Boulder. It belongs to the citizens of Colorado, and the vast majority of them don’t live anywhere near Boulder.”
So, aside from lumping CU students into the same category as asylum inmates and calling everyone who lives in Boulder “self-important ideologues,” I have a couple issues with these words. While it is certainly true that CU is a public institution anyone in Colorado should have the opportunity to go to, let’s face some facts here.
If the taxpayers of Colorado feel that CU “belongs” to them, it would be nice for them to pay for it. Higher education institutions in Colorado receive very little funding from the state. Colorado is currently ranked 48th in funding for higher education nationwide. The students, particularly those who are from out of state and paying ungodly tuition rates, are bearing the brunt of the costs. If the students are paying for the university to due its job, they’re entitled to have some say in the decision-making processes.
Getting back to context for a moment, it also really grinds my nerves when someone cherry-picks a quote from someone and attacks it without looking at what the person was really trying to say. For some still unclear reason, The Gazette felt the need to pick on some poor graduate student in their piece for saying she was more qualified to run CU than Benson.
According to the editorial, Jennifer Johnson, a CU graduate student, felt that she had an advanced degree she had more qualifications than Benson to be a university president. Presumably, Johnson was echoing the complaint that many students had that university presidents typically possess advanced degrees as they are the chief academic officer of a institution of higher learning.
Here was The Gazette’s response: “Wipe your nose, Jennifer Smarty Pants, and eat some humble pie.”
Eat some humble pie? What we have here is a major metropolitan newspaper taking cheap personal shots at a student. That to me is a remarkably childish, obnoxious, arrogant move. Newspapers are supposed to be balanced and fair in their reporting, and those standards can’t quite go out the window with editorials. The Gazette needs to take a long look at itself when it’s reduced to taking potshots at students.
Not to mention they’re ignoring the real issue at hand, which was whether Benson was qualified for the job or not. The Regents have obviously ended the debate by hiring Benson, but his academic merits and his background in the Republican party and oil industry were not the only concern students had about him.
There was also his time on the board at Metro State in Denver, where he made decisions that threatened tenure for professors. That case is still pending before the Colorado Supreme Court. At a major research institution like CU, tenure is a critical component of acquiring and retaining quality instructors.
The biggest concern however was the process by which Benson was selected. Many students felt that they were not given a say in the selection process because there was only one student on the Presidential Search Committee.
It also appeared to students and staff that the Regents were trying to rush Benson through the process, as there was very little time between their announcement and his first (and originally only) campus visit. The search for a new president is something that should be done with great deliberation, care, and the involvement of a wide variety of perspectives.
But The Gazette ignored all of this and instead focused on a single student speaking on a single issue. They generalized and misrepresented Johnson’s words and resorted to infantile name-calling. This is not the work of professional journalists, and the editorial staff should be ashamed of themselves.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Rob Ryan at rryan@colorado.edu.
