April 11, 2017
Scribe Staff
Through the investigative work done by a group of high school students from Pittsburg High School in Kansas, their newly hired principal resigned on April 4 after the student journalists looked into her credentials and discovered her education was fake.
This work has been praised by respected journalists from the Washington Post, among other national news organizations.
This story, and other student journalism victories, contributes to the idea that student journalists are just as necessary as journalists at any local or national media organization.
In the next two weeks, The Scribe will present its proposed budget to the Student Government Association senate, who will ultimately vote on and determine how much our operating budget will be for the ’17-’18 academic year.
Every cent is going to count next year, as we will have a staff of at least 17 students in the fall, have to account for two minimum wage increases and ask for money to cover our printer costs. But it’s more than just numbers; the budget being approved is vital to the success of our organization.
If we’re lucky (or unlucky), sometimes, UCCS is covered by local media. But for the most part, our local newspapers don’t exist to provide us with an extensive coverage of the university that many of us pay to spend four years at.
That is one of the key reasons why the Scribe exists.
The Scribe is the only publication in Colorado Springs that is focused solely on providing students, faculty and staff at UCCS with news, culture, sports and student opinion updates at our university. No other newspaper in the city does this on a weekly basis.
But aside from the importance of what we cover, it’s about the people who are putting in the work each week to make this coverage even possible.
The Scribe staff is UCCS.
In our office and over the past 51 years our newspaper has been a student-run organization, we have employed a diversity of majors, political affiliations, ethnicities, races and ages. We have challenging conversations and learn how to manage each other, our time and our content.
As a nontraditional university, we focus on the needs of students from all walks of life, whether it’s commuters who are coming back to school for a better future, or kids fresh out of high school living in a dorm away from home for the first time.
At The Scribe, we represent all of these walks of life. We have a diversity of thought here because of this, which is exactly what our small commuter school represents with each student that it serves.
Arguably, no other organization on campus provides as much of a comprehensive look into the ethics and critical thinking of UCCS than we do, quite frankly, because we have to.
Journalists exist to hold those in power accountable for their actions. We are here to give a voice to the voiceless and to highlight the accomplishments of those who deserve it.
We do this at The Scribe on a daily basis.
But even if our staff does not intend to go into journalism, and for the most part, many of us don’t, we are all still learning valuable skills that will apply to any industry that we will work in once we all go our separate ways after graduation.
The ability to think ethically and critically, to manage our time, to balance conflicting schedules and write fairly and neutrally are all important skills to what we wish to do with our degrees.
But we cannot accomplish this without the approval of our budget for next year.