The following statements will voice my personal opinion of the Northern Iowan as a newspaper. I served the last two semesters as a college of business senator for Northern Iowa Student Government (NISG). Due to studying abroad this semester, I have recently stepped down. Thus, my opinion is solely my own as a student at the University of Northern Iowa, and in no way does this represent the opinion of NISG.

As most organizations on campus, the NI is funded through student fees. One of the beautiful extra charge that shows up every semester on your u-bill. As a student who pays these fees, I expect my money to be well utilized. Lately, I do not feel this is the case with the Northern Iowan. NI is one of the main sources of campus wide news and updates. I would hope the news I read to be accurate, that the journalists execute their roles to the best of their ability in order to inform the Student Body accurately. On many occasions over the course of this semester, this has not been the case.

As many of us remember, legislation to convene an Investigative Committee as the first step for the Impeachment Process for the President of the Student Body was presented and failed. I voted not to convene the Committee. Such drastic measures were not necessary for problems which could be solved otherwise. Impeachment is the final step, not the first. Simply put, the reporting on this was atrocious.

An opinion article written by the executive editor, Nick Fisher titled, “Inform the Students, and their Senators” was published in November. In short, it was poorly researched and unjustly accused Senators of voting on the Impeachment Legislation without research or thought. Due to his inability to correctly relay Senator statements and correctly understand what was said in Senate, he drastically misinformed any student who read the article.

I was very quick to email the author and correct his statements.

In this email I stated, “To say I made an uninformed decision, which does not represent those I serve, is an insult. This statement insults the countless hours deliberating, the lack of sleep, the tears and the stress I endured trying to come to a decision. My grades, mental health and physical well-being was sacrificed so I could make the most informed decision possible. I do not take my position lightly. When making any decision for NISG, not just this one, I think of the students. I am not acting for myself. This is a statement every Senator in that room can echo.”

Later, the author published a follow-up correcting his false statements.

In full disclosure, I was contacted prior to print for a general statement. In the hopes of moving forward, I referred the editor to the NISG director of public relations and the senate minutes for quotes. Not once did he mention that my statement was for an article on my ability to serve, something I had yet to personally comment on.

In September, an article about a small tuition increase was released. NISG as a whole supported an increase to tuition this year. An increase in tuition is necessary to maintain the university we love. NISG has consistently spoken against tuition freezes, seeing as this only hurts UNI.

Instead, we support small, gradual increases versus large sporadic ones. The article does not focus on this but instead, over half of the article is student reaction. I promise, no one wants to shuck out another $100. I’m broke too. But this was necessary, and the article barely addresses that. Staff opinion articles continued this theme of not focusing correctly.

NI’s gap in information can be easily closed by walking to the Plaza level of Maucker and knocking on Rachael Johnson’s door. Rachael is the student regent. You know? The people who actually decide our tuition. She’s the only student on the board for the state, and UNI is lucky to have her on campus. But she is nowhere mentioned in the article. Once again, actively misinforming students.

If I did not hold the position I did, I would have had to rely on poor reporting for my knowledge on these situations. I can only image [sic] what else has simply passed in my mind as fact because I trusted the student funded paper.

Aside from these major instances of neglect, small and careless errors have become a common occurrence. These run from punctuation and grammar errors to printing a completely wrong date for an upcoming event they published on the front page. I would expect the staff to review these before print.

I pay my fees under the assumption that the money will be used to enhance my experience at the university. This is not case when my newspaper can’t deliver the news in a timely or accurate manner.

–Danielle Massey, former NISG Senator