On Tuesday evening, newly elected Student Body President Beau Flores and Vice President Jeff Vela sat down in a meeting with The Criterion’s next Editor in Chief Chris DeLeon to discuss the upcoming academic year.
This academic year, there was a feud between The Criterion and Associated Student Government when ASG Senator Richard Nguyen filed a grievance against The Criterion and threatened the organization’s budget, due to the publication of a direction quote containing profanity published in an article about a Sodexo employee committing sexual harassment. This feud was essentially put to rest at a meeting in late January.
Nevertheless, DeLeon wanted to meet with Flores and Vela to ensure that next year, ASG and The Criterion can work together more smoothly.
“If we could find some way to create a really good synergy across all of the organizations, it could really help CMU thrive,” DeLeon said.
Flores brought up the suggestion of regular meetings among organization leaders in order to create a better sense of teamwork this upcoming year.
DeLeon questioned how ASG would view the relationship between The Criterion’s free speech and the budget provided to the organization next year.
“I think those are two completely separate things and whatever you guys choose to publish, that’s what you choose to publish,” Vela said.
Regarding Nguyen’s previous threats toward the Criterion’s budget, as well as the posting of the Code of Ethics in The Criterion meeting room, Flores said that there was no chance of that happening.
“To say that a certain senator is having these thoughts or whatever, personally, that’s silly to me that they think that he or she can make a difference by cutting that budget,” Flores said. “I will apologize on behalf of that as an exec. That’s not professional at all.”
Flores backed up The Criterion’s free speech completely.
“I’m a hundred percent behind that,” he said. “If you guys felt like it was right, then by all means, this is your job, this is what you’re chosen to do, and if the students have something to say about it, then we’ll listen to the students.”
DeLeon agreed with this method, admitting that if The Criterion truly does something wrong, that they, as the publication, should be held accountable.
“I want to establish a system of fairness to begin with on that, and I want balance,” DeLeon said. “I don’t want us to be able to be fairly called negative. I know we’ve been called that a lot this year.”
DeLeon encouraged anyone who has any consistent problems with The Criterion to send in feedback, for the publication exists for its readers.
“I know I’m going to make mistakes as editor in chief, but that’s specifically why when I’ve been interviewing my editors, or all the people who want to be my editors, I’ve always been asking them how willing they’d be to stand up to me if they thought that I was wrong.”
The Criterion can be contacted with feedback at [email protected].
