The Poly rewrote the article in such a way where the views expressed were in direct conflict with the views the original article presented. My views were callously misrepresented by this publication, resulting in the printing of an article in my name with which I strenuously disagreed. I was given no opportunity to view a final draft of the article before publication, only as it was being published, and the draft I was able to view was vastly different from the article that appeared in the paper.

As a writer, I understand that editors often have the need to edit articles for space and other considerations. I also understand, as a writer who discusses potentially controversial topics, that there is little desire for The Poly to publish a controversial article. With this understanding, I specifically instructed the editors of The Poly to print the article only if it were to appear in its entirety. If the article had to be edited for content, I wished it to be dropped outright rather than censor the ideas I was attempting to present.

The editors of The Poly blatantly disregarded these wishes and printed a version of the article, edited for content, without permission. This sort of manipulated, unauthorized publication is unethical at best.

I met with the editors of The Poly to voice my concerns regarding this matter and was met with an array of justifications for their actions.

First, they defended the changes made to content, stating 95% of the article was left intact. Although much of it was in one piece, the amount of content left untouched is irrelevant when one considers the fact that the parts that were edited altered the meaning of the piece.

The editors of this publication also stated in their defense that papers are edited for content quite frequently and this is not an unusual practice. While this is true, the articles being edited belong not to the editor but to the writer, with whom ultimate control of content lays. It is the writer’s responsibility to change the content of a piece so it might be published. It is far from the place of the editor to change the content of the writer without his or her permission. Whether one editor alters my entire article in five minutes or eight editors alter a single paragraph in an hour’s time, the changes without my permission amount to fraud.

Finally, The Poly’s editors defended their actions with their fear that the introduction of opinion into pages other than the editorial ones would, ironically, hurt their integrity. The Poly does not realize that every article contains traces of bias, no matter what the topic, and to alter an article based on allegedly biased content amounts to censorship. If my article was too biased for the Features section, The Poly should have dropped it outright.

Oddly enough, the editors did not show the same worry of integrity when publishing an article in their sports section on the same day equating stipends to socialism.

With such a blatant disregard for its writers and a penchant for censorship, the integrity of The Poly is called into question. The actions of its editors have shown to be highly unethical. Serious reforms must be made if it truly aims to serve the RPI community.

Austin Randazzo