A letter from the editors of The USD Vista

A reflection on the Fall 2020 semester from our newsroom

To the University of San Diego community,

Today, Nov. 3, 2020, marks not only the beginning of a new four-year period in the American political cycle but also the last production day of The USD Vista for the fall semester. Today marks both a beginning and an end, an opportunity to confirm values or proclaim new ones.

This online and socially distant semester has given us an opportunity for self reflection. Today, we want to take the opportunity and use our platform to reiterate the mission, values, and purpose of USD’s student newspaper. 

The USD Vista’s mission is to serve the USD community through seeking truth and reporting it, enhancing civic discourse on campus, and holding those in power accountable by communicating important news to the campus. 

We are a small newsroom made up of 12 editors and a team of volunteer assistants and contributors. We’re undergraduate, full-time students from different majors and backgrounds. Every article goes through an intensive editing process over the course of a week: from the time a story is pitched to when it’s published, a section editor, our executive editors, and our advisor look over it to ensure accuracy and journalistic quality.

This past semester has made our work more important than ever as college newsrooms bear a heightened responsibility. Amidst a global pandemic, an election cycle, and a semester consisting of ever-changing rules and regulations, accurate information is more important, and more difficult to find, than ever. Nationwide, it is now commonplace to dismiss information based solely on whether its source comes from an opposing political background. As student journalists, we see this pattern and strive to find a way to bridge this gap on our own campus.  

As a news source for USD and San Diego, we believe it is our duty to seek out and lift up community voices, especially the voices of those who are too often marginalized and oppressed. We want to reiterate the editors’ full support for the Black Lives Matter movement and emphasize that we denounce racism. The USD Vista will never publish a news article or opinion piece that encourages, calls for, or incites discriminatory action. 

We strive to be a platform and resource for the USD community to voice their stories and cultivate meaningful conversations by highlighting diversity of thought and enriching the USD student experience. 

Students are the reason why we are able to publish a newspaper every week. $14 of student fees each year goes toward USD Student Media; in return, we try to report important information to the USD community to make the cost of two Tu Merc sandwiches worth your while.

Student tuition and fees fund this campus: they pay the administrators that make decisions about your education, provide the Associated Student Government with a $1.3 million budget to represent student wants and needs, and fund our journalism to hold the aforementioned parties and others in power accountable. In the microcosm of our relatively small campus community, it is our responsibility to make sure students, faculty, and staff are well represented and well served by those in positions of power. 

Whereas our news section is aimed at objective storytelling, and our feature section looks to uplift community stories, it is our opinion section where we strive to express the diverse thought on our campus. In Spring 2019, we changed the format of our opinion section to allow students to speak with their own voice on issues they believe to be important to the USD community through op-eds.

We are not a perfect news organization and never will be. We understand and acknowledge the institutional racism that is pervasive in American media institutions, and we have made efforts to encourage more diversity in our newsroom.

During the 2018-2019 school year, 17% of The USD Vista’s editors identified as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). This year, 42% of our editors identify as BIPOC. We have made a concerted effort to increase our coverage of BIPOC experiences on campus, as well as increasing outreach to student organizations to write guest opinion pieces in order to encourage diversity of thought.

Regardless, we understand that there is always more work to be done in our efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive newsroom. 

Our fundamental values of accuracy, transparency, and professionalism guide our journalism. We value and welcome feedback, criticism, and critique from the USD community. These things make us better. And as college students, our first and primary goal is to learn.

After we ran an op-ed that sparked a lot of discussion within the USD community, several students and members of our Associated Student Government criticized the fact that we did not make it abundantly clear that the article was an opinion piece and that the views expressed in the editorial and op-ed sections are not necessarily those of The USD Vista staff, the University of San Diego, or its student body. We recognized this concern and critique, and adjusted how we display our opinion pieces in our online articles, social media, and our newsletter.

At a certain point, however, we must draw a boundary between constructive criticism and attacks on our organization and staff members. This is a fine and delicate line to draw, but we must draw it.

Two years ago, The USD Vista ran a news article covering a protest near campus. In response to this article, stacks of newspapers began disappearing from campus, and the author of that article received death threats. 

We bring this up not to dwell on the past, but to provide context as we try to move forward. 

In a meeting with and hosted by Associated Student Government members on Oct. 15, we discussed this article and its impact on that writer. In that meeting, an ASG senator told our staff that we should expect to receive death threats because we work in the media industry.

No student on our campus should receive death threats. No student on our campus should expect death threats because of the organizations they participate in. And no student, especially elected officials of our university, should tell others that death threats are to be expected because they want to work for the school newspaper, TV, or radio station. 

Student government officials have also called for the censorship of an op-ed, “prioritizing shutting it down as soon as possible.” 

No one has to agree with opinion pieces in our newspaper; that is not our goal in publishing them. They serve to encourage discourse and conversation. Calls for censorship, especially by 

a governing body, violate basic principles of the freedom of speech and the press. These calls, even if not acted upon, interfere with our ability to fully perform our roles as journalists and uphold our duties to this campus.

Statements like these undermine our position as a voice for USD students. Condemnations of student voices in the opinion section dissuade others from utilizing that platform to speak on issues important to them. Implying that death threats are commonplace for media industry workers deters students from entering our newsroom and adding their unique background to our production process. 

Student government officials set the standard for student conduct on campus. Insensitive statements like these make it difficult to do our jobs of uplifting student voices, and achieve our goals of maximizing student inclusion. These statements cross the line; they are not constructive criticism, they are unacceptable actions toward our staff and organization.

USD’s Mission Statement affirms that “The University values students, faculty and staff from different backgrounds and faith traditions, and is committed to creating an atmosphere of trust, safety and respect in a community characterized by a rich diversity of people and ideas.”

It is not only our job to give a voice to students, faculty, and staff of all backgrounds, but also to maintain a healthy relationship with the community we serve and represent. We cannot maintain that relationship, nor can we effectively do our job when that atmosphere of trust, safety, and respect does not exist. 

This is the final issue of The USD Vista we will publish in 2020. When we return in 2021, our world will be different. Perhaps it will be for the better, perhaps for the worse. No matter what, when we return, we will do so with the same dedication to producing quality journalism, the same desire to serve our community, and the same commitment to our values as before. That dedication, desire, and commitment is what drives us. It always has been, and it always will be. 

— The editors of The USD Vista