Last week, we reported that Kimberly Love, assistant professor of English, and Kai Green ’07, assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, had canceled their spring semester courses. Love had cited “the College’s violent practices” as the reason for her departure in an email to students enrolled in her courses; Green had written in an email to a reporter that the College was “not a safe place” for them.

In the time since the article’s publication, the Record has received criticism that our coverage did not extensively address the anti-blackness and transphobia that Love and Green experienced. Another criticism was that the piece did not explore broader issues of equity and inclusion that manifest themselves in the College’s historic struggles to support and retain its minority faculty.

Our foundational duty is to provide our readers with relevant information that we are able to gather and verify using direct sources. The articles that we publish include the details that we feel we can responsibly communicate with respect to journalistic ethics and standards. Thus, in order to uphold our commitment to credible reporting, we publish only information that can be either backed by facts or attributed to direct accounts. Either failing to report a relevant story or reporting information we are unable to source would be negligent.

While no one story can claim to give a comprehensive account of an issue, each is part of a continuous effort to shed light on the events and problems that affect the College community. Our inquiry into a pertinent issue does not end with one article.

On Thursday, we were sent a copy of the 2009 Faculty and Staff Initiative report, a document detailing the difficulties faced by minority faculty at the College and recommendations for the College to better support its minority faculty and staff. Since we became aware of this document, we have interviewed key participants in the report’s publication and ensuing discussion in an effort to examine how these issues persist in and affect our community today. We hope that our coverage this week further advances and informs campus conversation regarding these problems. We will work to do the same in the future as we pursue additional information.

We serve to seek answers to questions that our community raises. We encourage readers to contact us with tips, concerns and criticisms that can enhance or accelerate our coverage.

We will continue to investigate issues that affect members of our community – particularly issues that have previously received insufficient attention and those that affect vulnerable groups. In doing so, we hope to contribute toward a more equitable environment while adhering to our obligation to avoid conjecture and misinformation.

We owe the College, the community and our readers nothing less. 

Danny Jin

Editor-in-Chief