The E-Mail, The Quote, and The Decision

Wednesday's paper includes a quote from CCSC President Michelle Diamond in which she says of SGB Chair Jonathan Siegel: "that kid needs to be put in his place."

The story and the quote bring up the some of the more interesting ethics issues we've confronted this year, and it's worth taking a minute to explain how an alleged—and allegedly bygone—feud between the heads of the SGB and CCSC made it into a story about Community Impact.

The story began on Saturday when members of the CI board called me to express their displeasure with our coverage of the activities fair. In the pullout, CI groups were not included in a map of clubs which would be attending the fair (a problem which arose from an incomplete listing being sent to us from the office of Student Development and Activities) and were left out of a chart on how the Funding at Columbia University process works. (Our bad.) Additionally, they expressed confusion as to why SGB's 13 percent increase in funding deserved a story but their 10 percent cut didn't.

In discussing those and a few other concerns, the CI executives mentioned that their activities fair was being held today, which gave us a hook for a new story on CI. I pulled together a few writers and asked them to look into the funding cut. They came back with CI stating several concerns about the F@CU process--concerns which we had heard before but had never been able to fully explore. The reporters also tried looking for some other people who had concerns about the funding procedures.

Enter Jon, who said he thought the process was "arbitrary"--that the F@CU board, made up of the incoming and outgoing council presidents, decided on a number and then figured out a justification later. This was something that seemed to be borne out by CI's complaint that they hadn't received an explanation for the full amount of their cut.

The problem was that we had heard rumors for months--seemingly confirmed by the e-mail, which we received over the summer--that there was ongoing animosity between Jon and Michelle. (Michelle was one of the people in charge of proscribing the SGB allocation, which Jon had said he thought was lower than it should have been.) Given this background, Jon's criticism the system took on another potential context, one which we felt our readers should know.

It was this chain of events--CI's complaints about our coverage, leading to a new CI story, leading to their complaints about F@CU, which were supported by SGB's complaints, which were balanced against the apparent personal issues at hand--which led to the quote getting published, and the decision was only made after close to an hour of discussion within the office. Neither Jon nor Michelle, after hearing the quote would run, asked us to pull it, though they both stated their reservations and, as shown in their quotes, indicated that the two were getting along.

Anyways, that's the way it happened.