Campus News is a weekly e-mail sent out by Marketing and Media Relations. For those who actually read it, it can be a convenient way to learn about the research and accomplishments of faculty and students. Yes, it puts a sugar-coated spin on things, but if you can look past that—and most RPI students can—it’s not so bad.
Unless you read the letters in The Poly’s editorial section religiously, you probably aren’t up to date on the union debate facing RPI’s service workers. Still, when the union vote scheduled for last Thursday was cancelled, the RPI community was finally informed of what was going on, at least to the extent that Marketing and Media Relations thought we should know about. Every student on campus received a biased account of the situation via a “special” Campus News bulletin.
To say the bulletin was in poor taste is an understatement. The word “news” implies objectivity and a presentation of both sides of the story. This “special” news bulletin exhibited no such thing. In fact, what was sent out was very much something that would find its way on to the Editorial and Opinion section of The Poly. Very few facts were offered to the readers. Instead the bulletin was used as more of a propaganda sheet.
This is something that sinks far below the level we expect from the RPI Administration, and in the future we hope to see no more of these pointedly biased “news” releases.
