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After the All Lives Matter sign was posted in front of the library Feb. 9, Arianna Ngnomire sat in front of the Leatherby Libraries holding a sign that said But will you say it to my face? And sophomore political science major Alec Harrington, who put up the sign, showed up.

We believe that the role of a student newspaper is to accurately portray the conversations that are occurring on our campus. People wanted to know why Harrington supports All Lives Matter, and we decided to let him tell the community himself.

The publication process of his column was not a fast one. The column was sent into The Panther Feb. 22, but we refused to publish it due to numerous fact errors. Harrington came back to source his statistics, but we, as journalists, did not censor that which was his own perspective. We think that how someone chooses to interpret the facts is their opinion.

We also felt that giving Harrington a voice would be biased unless we also accurately portrayed other perspectives. So, in the same issue March 6, we published Harringtons column alongside Ngnomires column Black lives dont matter.

We realize that there is a line between free speech and racism, and that is why we spent more than an hour on the phone with Harrington and two weeks over email asking that he explain why he called Black Lives Matter protesters thugs. It is why other lines that could not be backed up by reputable sources were removed from this column, as well.

It is not our job to agree or disagree with the points of guest columns, but when Harrington stepped into the public sphere with his All Lives Matter sign, his voice became representative of a community that does exist at Chapman. We cover all parts of reality at Chapman and he is a factor in that.

There is a community at Chapman that disagrees with Harrington, as illustrated by Ngnomire, among others, and we have published their voices as well.

As The Panther, we understand that we are not free of critique and are open to addressing your concerns. Anyone is welcome to submit a column to us. We also encourage letters to the editor, which will be published too.

See the article here:
Why we published the guest column 'Do black lives matter to Black Lives Matter?' - The Panther