Front page news or damage control?

Although we at the Counter Point Journal (CxPJ) do not wish to repeatedly disparage the school’s official newspaper, the Cooper Point Journal (CPJ), there are times when it just cannot be avoided. One such time is this.

In the previous issue of the Cooper Point Journal, we reported on the flaws of an internal audit made on Evergreen’s Labor Center. The audit, which was prompted by accusations from a right-wing anti-labor organization, criticized the inherent practices of the Labor Center in a move that shocked other campus-based public service centers and even compelled the American Association of University Professors to come to the Labor Center’s defense on behalf of academic freedom.

The CxPJ revealed how the college’s audit was laden with contradictions and internal politics. Most revealingly, we learned that a crucial paragraph in the audit plan was mysteriously deleted in order to broaden the scope of the audit from its original goal, resulting in the most damning (though inexplicable) criticisms of the Labor Center. The “case of the missing paragraph”—which the auditor denies ever existed—revealed that there was some foul play behind the administration’s criticisms of the Labor Center.

On Feb. 18, a few weeks after publication of the Labor Center story, the Cooper Point Journal printed its own article spotlighting Evergreen’s internal auditor. The CPJ’s article, however, was posed from the viewpoint of the auditor. The article, written by Jason Slotkin, was entitled “Public Records Pitfalls: New Public Records Officer May Face Faculty Resistance, Other Challenges.”

The premise of the article was that a new job position of public records officer was opening at Evergreen, and that the position would face significant hurdles from stubborn faculty.

However, there were some conspicuous flaws in the article:
1. The article quotes six different adminstration officials and is critical of faculty from the administrators’ point of view. Yet not a single faculty member was interviewed to respond to the criticisms.

2. The article gives the first and final word to the college’s internal auditor. The auditor is quoted as saying what a difficult job she has. The article describes how the auditor has been called a cop and an FBI agent by unnamed critics. Yet the article makes no mention of the legitimate criticisms posed by the Labor Center and just recently by the CxPJ, including the paragraph that was mysteriously excised from the Labor Center audit plan—a paragraph that was presumably written by the auditor and later denied to have ever existed.

An even bigger concern is why the CPJ article was published at all. At 1300 words, the article was one of the longest articles printed in the CPJ this year. It was featured on the front page as the sole news article for the Feb. 18 issue.

This raises some questions:
Why did the CPJ devote a front page article to a seemingly trivial subject: the opening of a new job position at Evergreen?
Why, if the subtitle of the article was “New Public Records Officer May Face Faculty Resistance, Other Challenges,” did the CPJ interview only adminstrators and not interview any faculty?
Why did the CPJ give the auditor so much deference and only cite unreasonable criticsms against her, while ignoring the important criticisms of the auditor made by the CxPJ just a few weeks prior?

The CPJ cannot pretend that it was unaware of the CxPJ’s Labor Center article. Although the CPJ staff refuses to acknowledge in its own paper the existence of another school newspaper, the CPJ has maintained a peculiar interest in us. At one point, CPJ staff
attempted to discover the host of the CxPJ website.

Why this mattered is unknown. When CPJ staff learned that one of its employees (or “paid volunteer,” in CPJ parlance) also volunteered with the CxPJ, a private meeting was held in which CPJ managers attempted to inform the employee that this was somehow inappropriate.

Yet when we repeatedly contacted both Jason Slotkin and the Cooper Point Journal for answers to our present questions, we received no reply.

The concern about the origin of the article is based on the suspicion that the school administration suggested this article to the CPJ, with the intent of offsetting the criticisms of the auditor and the administration made in the previous issue of the CxPJ. If so, it confirms routine criticisms of the CPJ as acting as the school administration’s mouthpiece.

Both the timing and the tone of the article, coming soon after the CxPJ’s exposé, suggest this possibility. But without the CPJ’s cooperation, we cannot know for sure. The most we can hope is that the CPJ decides to become more accountable for the articles it publishes and more open to scrutiny of its practices, if it is truly to live up to the title of “Your Student Newspaper,” which it so boldly touts.