DO YOU think The Cavalier Daily isn't meeting your needs? Is it not covering the issues that affect your life? Is it making false assumptions, or failing to treat people with due respect? Is it blind to how things look from certain perspectives?
Now's your chance to get involved and do something about it.
As ombudsman for The Cavalier Daily, I have been tasked with assembling and chairing a readership panel. The panel will meet roughly every two weeks, on Sunday evenings, to talk about readers' concerns. Senior editors will be expected to attend at least some of the time and, as the organization evolves, other members of the staff may come too.
Panelists will be expected to read the paper regularly, talk about it with other members of the University community and attend every meeting of the panel prepared to discuss it. But while this may sound like a course syllabus, in this case, the panelists will be the ones doing the evaluating.
They'll be asked to judge the paper particularly on how well it serves the diverse readership it tries to reach, and to guide it in improving its relations with those who have historically found it unsatisfactory while upholding sound journalistic principles and continuing to serve those whom it already serves well.
This isn't just about not offending people. Part of deciding what to put in the newspaper is determining which of all the things that happen every day on Grounds and around the world are important and interesting. But what's important and interesting often seems different from different perspectives. The readership panel can help the editors see what's important and interesting from perspectives other than their own.
So it's important that the panel be diverse. And the diversity that's important isn't just about race. Ideally, the panel should reflect the broad spectrum of diversity at the University: all races and a variety of ethnic groups; both sexes, various sexual orientations, and both feminist and conservative approaches to gender and sexuality; various religions, degrees of religiosity, and denominations and movements within religions; political views across the left-right spectrum as well as views that do not fit neatly on that spectrum; in-state and out-of-state students; native-born, immigrant and foreign students; undergraduate, professional and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff; a wide range of areas of study; rich, poor and everywhere in between; urban, rural and suburban; students who get As easily and students who struggle just to pass; people with and without physical disabilities and psychiatric diagnoses; people with strong family support and those who face challenges in that regard; students planning further academic work and students looking forward to getting out of academe; Greek and non-Greek -- you get the idea. If I didn't list your favorite category, that doesn't mean it might not be helpful. I'd like to have someone in a secret society, if that can be managed, though I'm not sure how it would be.
Yet the panel should be only about ten people. Fortunately, everyone falls into more than one of these categories. (Some combinations of categories offer perspectives of their own: Consider black conservatives and gay Catholics.) And members of the panel will be expected to let their membership be known among their friends and associates, who, at least in many cases, will, I hope, be diverse; this way, they can bring in input from people who are not on the panel and may have perspectives the panelists don't.
If you'd like to be on the panel, I invite you to apply. Send me, at ombud@cavalierdaily.com, your name, your phone number and answers to the following questions (some of which were developed by the editors in conjunction with the Minority Rights Coalition):
1. Do you read The Cavalier Daily? Why or why not? If so, what is your favorite section of The Cavalier Daily, and how many days per week do you usually read it?
2. Talk about a specific instance in which you were dissatisfied with The Cavalier Daily for any reason. What particular action should The Cavalier Daily have taken, and why?
3. What experience, if any, do you have as a student leader, and what, if any, are your current leadership activities?
4. How would you contribute to the diversity of the panel?
I will post this column to the Facebook group The Cavalier Daily Ombudsman's Group. If you're applying for the panel, or if you're not but care about these issues, please join it and invite your friends. I want as many -- and as varied -- applications as possible.
Applications are due Feb. 8. Good luck.
Alexander R. Cohen is The Cavalier Daily's ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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