Editorial: Why We’re Creating an Editorial Board

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(Design by Taylor Maguire | Daily Utah Chronicle)

 

The last two years have been uniquely turbulent for the University of Utah. In 2018, we saw the inauguration of a new university president and, just over a month later, the on-campus murder of Lauren McCluskey. We watched our school’s police department mishandle her case in horrifying ways and our campus become the site of multiple protests.

Protests erupted again this summer when many of us joined against police brutality and racism as our city mourned the deaths of Bernardo-Palacios Carbajal, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others. And, like universities all over the world, we’ve been grappling with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic since shutting down this spring.

Throughout all this, the Daily Utah Chronicle’s opinion desk has been writing and sharing student perspectives on these and other urgent issues. We’ve drawn on research and individual experience to provide an independent student voice on current events, politics and culture, as we have for over a century.

We’ve spoken out about police reform, the 2020 gubernatorial primary and the importance of supporting local businesses through the pandemic. We’ve written about the U’s tuition and fees, the upcoming vice presidential debate and the value of volunteering for political campaigns. What’s been missing, though, is a unified student perspective, in addition to the individual voices of the opinion section. That’s why we created an editorial board.

The Daily Utah Chronicle Editorial Board, like other reputable papers’, is a group of senior opinion journalists who will rely on research and debate to write staff editorials on current events, politics and culture. The specifics of who participates in and sways these kinds of panels vary from paper to paper, but at the Chronicle, writers and leadership outside of the editorial board will not influence the positions it decides to support.

The board will not speak for the newsroom or the Chronicle at large. Instead, editorials will represent the majority view of the editorial board and be written separate from the newsroom. And while we hope to voice the perspective of many University of Utah students, we understand that won’t always be possible. We welcome letters to the editor in disagreement or criticism of our views.

Each opinion writer approaches the world and their work in a unique way — but an editorial board gives us the opportunity to approach our writing not only with our individual perspectives but with shared values of safety, accountability, sustainability and equity on campus and in our community more broadly. These are the values University of Utah students hold, and the values necessary to build a better world for our generation and those to come. 

 

The Daily Utah Chronicle Editorial Board is a group of senior opinion journalists who rely on research and debate to write staff editorials. Editorials represent the majority view of the editorial board and are written separate from the newsroom.