“Conservative” label comes as a surprise

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There have been several comments made lately about this paper and its editorial content being too conservative.

Statements, comments and letters have been made to this effect. A candidate for office in this area turned down an offer to participate in a CM Life-sponsored debate partially because she was concerned we wouldn’t be able to provide a moderator who wasn’t conservative.

Wait, what?

Being the editor in charge of opinion content at this paper and an individual my roommate lovingly refers to as a “dirty liberal hipster,” CM Life being a conservative publication is news to me.

Our editorials, which are written by the editorial board and reflect the official views of this publication, have never and will never be written from a standpoint of political bias.

The opinions expressed are developed by the board’s six members discussing and analyzing the facts of a situation and attempting to come to logical and reasonable conclusions. These conclusions have, throughout this semester, fallen on both sides of the political spectrum.

It should also be stressed that CM Life is operationally independent from CMU. Our paper is published with money raised from advertising and no money from the tax-funded university is appropriated to this publication. Quite simply, taxpayers have no more right to demand we print certain things than they do of any other newspaper.

As far as the columns, which do not reflect the views of anybody except the author, yes, we have a lot of conservative columnists. This is not by design, or part of any kind of plot or agenda on the part of CM Life.

We run these conservative columns simply because these are the people who applied to be columnists and these are the columns they turn in for publication.

The Voices page is provided as an open forum for all views and beliefs. We do not favor the publication of pieces representing any set of views over pieces representing any other set of views.

We will also never fire a columnist or not run that columnist’s work based on political views alone. We attempt to maintain a standard of quality for what is published, but the content and topics discussed in columns is the prerogative of the columnists. The editorial staff does not instruct columnists as to what views to convey, nor would we ever do that.

The situation of which views are expressed in which quantity on this page comes down to a very simple statement: If a CMU student wants to express a view alternative to what is seen in this paper, that student should apply to CM Life and write columns representing those views.