I opened the last issue of the Record and was surprised by what was missing in its coverage: any mention of the memorial placed on the porch of the Paresky Center to mourn the lives of the 1,200 civilians murdered by Hamas terrorists in the south of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
This memorial contained five large banners that listed the names of those killed by Hamas terrorists, a header banner with the Hebrew words “zichronam livracha” that translate to “may their memory be a blessing,” an easel with a poster explaining the memorial, and rocks which community members could place in front of the names (a tradition in Judaism meant to symbolize the permanence of those who have died).
Interestingly, the Record covered some of the events that took place to address the atrocities of Oct. 7, including a Chaplains’ office vigil and the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) vigil and display. Why did the Record decide that Monday’s memorial was not worthy of coverage?
Based on the Record’s history of covering campus political activism and public installations, the memorial honoring the 1,200 people murdered on Oct. 7 would seem to fall within the scope of the paper’s reporting. The Record’s May 8, 2024, article “Encampment enters week two” made note of the posters of the hostages on Paresky porch as well as the reactions to those posters.
I understand that the Record tends not to cover posters placed throughout campus that are unaffiliated with public events. However, this memorial was not a simple posting — it was registered as a large-format display. As one of the six students responsible for the memorial, I can confirm that we reserved all of Paresky porch for the display, knowing it would take on a greater form than just “posters.” Additionally, two articles published in the Oct. 9, 2024, issue of the Record — “Installment visualizes food waste at the College” and “SJP vigil memorializes Palestinians killed in Gaza over last year” — mentioned other displays on Paresky porch.
Members of the Record editorial board told me that they consider multiple factors in their editorial decisions, but that if we had held a public event gathering then our memorial might have warranted coverage. The former article, however, covers an installation that occurred on Paresky porch without an official gathering of people. Interestingly, the memorial members of SJP put up after their vigil was very similar in execution and style to the memorial to the 1,200 victims of Hamas erected just the day before. Yet, to my disappointment, the Record was silent on the memorial for Hamas’ victims and failed to note any similarities between the two memorials. Clearly, the Record routinely covers public installations — with or without student gatherings — as well as student responses to geopolitical events, as indicated by the latter. Why, then, was there no coverage of the Oct. 7 memorial?
Mentioning the memorial curated by several Jewish students on campus in the Record’s last issue would have provided necessary context to an emotionally charged and politically fraught week. As a Jewish student with close ties to the conflict, I felt as though the way I and other Jewish students mourned this day was unrepresented.
I would like to believe that the Record was guilty of only a simple oversight. However, to me, the exclusion of the Monday display represents a failure by the Record to cover a diverse range of student voices and provide adequate context for their stories.
Though I do believe this striking gap in the Record’s coverage should be remedied, it also reflects a potential conflict of interest within the Record as a whole. The paper’s editorial policy states, “Writers should not write about, and editors should not edit, news stories that personally involve them or organizations in which they are involved. For other sections, discretion will be used to determine if a conflict of interest exists, and the writer’s involvement will be disclosed in the article.” (In the recent article “Two weeks, one T-shirt: How this year’s class of JAs contended with obligatory wardrobe minimalism,” for instance, the editor’s note asserts that a Junior Advisor [JA] on the editorial board was not involved in the writing or editing process.)
However, in articles covering SJP, such as the vigil from the week of October 9 and the recent SJP protest in front of Wachenheim Science Center, I could not find any mention of any editors’ involvement or lack thereof. Members of the Record board told me that none of their editors organized either of these events, but I believe that their lack of involvement should have been made clear.
Record writers who are affiliated with SJP or who have ever attended their events must disclose that information to provide context for their coverage. Given that representatives for SJP have been quoted anonymously in the Record, it would also be appropriate — and I would argue, necessary — for Record writers to disclose that they are not affiliated with SJP. It seems unrealistic to expect that editors will have no public political involvement (as is the policy of newspapers like the New York Times), since the Record is a college newspaper and not college students’ full-time occupation. Still, the Record must reckon with how it is both passively, through failure to disclose reporter affiliations, and actively, by granting SJP journalistic anonymity even as they gather in public spaces on campus, complicit in an epidemic of anonymous engagement in political discourse at the College. At any rate, simple journalistic integrity demands that the Record disclose the political associations of its writers and editors.
I remain disappointed by the lack of integrity displayed by the Record in its Oct. 9, 2024, issue. It is my sincere hope that the Record will take accountability for this week’s shortcomings and reaffirm that it can be a reliable and trustworthy source of campus news going forward.
Sincerely,
Ariella Scheer ’26