The public deserves information; the employees of this district should provide it.
At the Feb. 7 men’s basketball game, Paul Lede, the coordinator of student success in student life at St. Philip’s College, refused to give The Ranger any information on the Tigers’ roster.
Being told that someone doesn’t want to talk to us is not uncommon. After all, no one is under any obligation to talk to us.
Many of the people we interview, such as district trustees, have information they’d rather keep under lock and key.
While being stonewalled is frustrating, the board’s reasons for doing it are never personal.
For instance, when the board refused to say who they interviewed for the chancellor position, we were at least told this was to protect the people who had applied from any punitive measures they might face if their current employers knew they were looking elsewhere.
Lede gave The Ranger no reason for refusing to talk to us or for refusing to promote the students he is supposed to support.
Instead, our reporter had to get the information on the Tigers’ roster from the score keeper’s sheet.
If employees of the district refuse to promote their students’ successes, they’re not serving anyone.
However, discussing failure is also necessary sometimes.
When a team loses, we recognize it can be hard to discuss that loss with the media.
However, it is generally practiced across all sports.
Openly discussing your team’s failures is sportsmanlike.
We learn from our failures. Speaking about them helps us avoid them in the future.
Simply refusing to speak because you didn’t like last week’s news is petulant.
If anyone takes issue with how The Ranger covered a previous event, meeting or story, we hope they would be willing to address it with us.
We are students, and while our advisers do ensure our articles are good enough to be read by the public, there are nuances we can’t always account for.
While we can ensure we never make any bold comments that aren’t grounded in fact, it is impossible to account for how our readers will interpret our work.
We should be clear; we never intentionaly write negative materials about any people or organizations.
Talking to us gives the students you represent a voice in their greater college community. They deserve that much.
So if you ever take issue with something we write, please contact us. We want to learn from our mistakes.
Call us at 210-486-1773, email sac-ranger@alamo.edu or write a letter at www.theranger.org/letters-to-the-editor/.
