The Racquette Speaks:
Survival Guide
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Opinion
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to SUNY Potsdam for another fun-filled semester. The Racquette just wanted to a moment or two to review how things work at our paper.
First, if you're interested in writing for The Racquette, we invite you to join us at our weekly meetings, Monday nights at 7 in the Barrington Student Union. All students are welcome, and we would be delighted to have you on board. Attending meetings and submitting articles or photographs also makes you eligible for Staff Writer/Staff Photographer status, which marks you as an active member in the organization.
Second, if you're interested in helping copyedit The Racquette, we invite you to join us at our office for Copyediting Night, Wednesday nights at our office, which is in the Mail Room in the Barrington Student Union, room 119. All students are welcome, and we would be overjoyed to have your help. Furthermore, regularly attending Copyediting Night makes you a Copyeditor, which gives you the right to attend the E-Board meetings and even vote as an editor. This position and that of Staff Writer/Staff Photographer are not mutually exclusive, so if you really want to help out, you're welcome to do both.
Third, you may notice that some organizations get columns in the paper. This is because we like columns, and a person or a group of people who we consider reliable wants to write a column for us, that makes us happy. If you, or you and your organization, are interested in writing a column and confident that you can supply content regularly and reliably, we invite you to drop us a line at racquett@potsdam.edu with an inquiry, or stop by our meetings Monday nights at 7pm in the Barrington Student Union.
Fourth and finally, if you want to write an op-ed for us, we would love to print it. We don't publish hate speech or anything similarly illegal, and we don't publish anonymous letters without a compelling reason (such as the safety of the author). Pretty much anything else goes, though, and if we do publish your letter, we don't edit it. If something makes you happy, or angry, or sad, or outraged, climb up on your soap box and let the campus know! Of course, the flip side of this policy is that we publish just about anything from just about anyone. We aren't endorsing anyone's viewpoint by printing their letters. If you don't like something that appears in the op-ed section, complaining about it in anonymous comments on the website isn't going to help - your best bet is to write a signed op-ed in response, which will probably annoy the original author, and then we can get some serious dialogue going. We like dialogue!
If any of these options appeal to you, great! Please bear in mind, however, that these options are only made available to you if you attend our meetings. Though it seems silly to state this, it is also the only way in which the paper can be altered to suit YOUR needs as an individual. To reference an old adage, if you want something done, you should probably look into ways in which you can do it yourself (see above).
So there's The Racquette Survival Guide in a nutshell, and I hope it's very helpful. If you found yourself referred here by someone on the website, it's probably because they thought you weren't aware of one of these policies - please take a moment to read any relevant points above. If you're reading this for the first time or because you're unfamiliar with our paper, welcome! We put a lot of work in to this paper, and we hope you enjoy our efforts.
First, if you're interested in writing for The Racquette, we invite you to join us at our weekly meetings, Monday nights at 7 in the Barrington Student Union. All students are welcome, and we would be delighted to have you on board. Attending meetings and submitting articles or photographs also makes you eligible for Staff Writer/Staff Photographer status, which marks you as an active member in the organization.
Second, if you're interested in helping copyedit The Racquette, we invite you to join us at our office for Copyediting Night, Wednesday nights at our office, which is in the Mail Room in the Barrington Student Union, room 119. All students are welcome, and we would be overjoyed to have your help. Furthermore, regularly attending Copyediting Night makes you a Copyeditor, which gives you the right to attend the E-Board meetings and even vote as an editor. This position and that of Staff Writer/Staff Photographer are not mutually exclusive, so if you really want to help out, you're welcome to do both.
Third, you may notice that some organizations get columns in the paper. This is because we like columns, and a person or a group of people who we consider reliable wants to write a column for us, that makes us happy. If you, or you and your organization, are interested in writing a column and confident that you can supply content regularly and reliably, we invite you to drop us a line at racquett@potsdam.edu with an inquiry, or stop by our meetings Monday nights at 7pm in the Barrington Student Union.
Fourth and finally, if you want to write an op-ed for us, we would love to print it. We don't publish hate speech or anything similarly illegal, and we don't publish anonymous letters without a compelling reason (such as the safety of the author). Pretty much anything else goes, though, and if we do publish your letter, we don't edit it. If something makes you happy, or angry, or sad, or outraged, climb up on your soap box and let the campus know! Of course, the flip side of this policy is that we publish just about anything from just about anyone. We aren't endorsing anyone's viewpoint by printing their letters. If you don't like something that appears in the op-ed section, complaining about it in anonymous comments on the website isn't going to help - your best bet is to write a signed op-ed in response, which will probably annoy the original author, and then we can get some serious dialogue going. We like dialogue!
If any of these options appeal to you, great! Please bear in mind, however, that these options are only made available to you if you attend our meetings. Though it seems silly to state this, it is also the only way in which the paper can be altered to suit YOUR needs as an individual. To reference an old adage, if you want something done, you should probably look into ways in which you can do it yourself (see above).
So there's The Racquette Survival Guide in a nutshell, and I hope it's very helpful. If you found yourself referred here by someone on the website, it's probably because they thought you weren't aware of one of these policies - please take a moment to read any relevant points above. If you're reading this for the first time or because you're unfamiliar with our paper, welcome! We put a lot of work in to this paper, and we hope you enjoy our efforts.
Be the first to comment on this story