User Rating: / 3
PoorBest 

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to stand up and make their opinions heard. Whether it’s protesting an injustice or appealing for a change, people need to stand up and voice their beliefs. Through a series of recent events, I feel that our work at The Revelation has been compromised.

There is one aspect that has compromised what we do at The Revelation. Before I go into the specifics, I want to clarify that I am not in any way trying to demonize the SACS administration, but I want to give suggestions that will improve the system at The Revelation. The issue that I have is the process of prior review. Before we can send The Revelation to print, we must get our material approved by the administration. Not only does this delay the release of The Revelation, we sometimes have to make corrections that take away any controversy from our stories. While I can understand that the administration does this to protect students, it sends a bad message to our staff writers and editors. Because of this prior review, we feel like we have to “water down” our stories for fear of it being “censored.”

One of the messages that the Harris brothers conveyed in Do Hard Things was to raise the low expectations of teens. Here at The Revelation, we do real world journalism— going out in search of the truth. Being able to write on The Revelation Staff is a huge privilege. With that privilege, however, comes major responsibilities. I feel that when the administration tries to “censor” our writing, they are depriving us of one of the most important life lessons. That life lesson is accepting the consequences for our actions. If we are willing to say something controversial in our article, we should also be willing to accept the consequences that come with it.

Consider this analogy. Instead of studying for a Bible test, a student decides to “wing it” because Bible tests are supposed to be “easy.” One should not be surprised when that student fails the test, because he didn’t prepare for it. Instead of getting mad at the teacher and forcing him or her to change the grade, the parent knows that his or her child must accept the consequences of his actions. By facing the consequences, the student learns to be more responsible with his time in order to prevent such painful repercussions from happening again.

This should be the same mindset with Revelation writers. We are responsible for what we write and the administration hurts us by keeping us from accepting our just consequences. If people have a problem with what one of our writers says, they can do one of two things. They can either contact the administration for disciplinary action if the controversy is truly egregious, or they can write a letter to the editor voicing their disapproval. The Revelation staff is comprised of mature writers who can take constructive criticism.

If the administration is a little hesitant with giving our writers “free reign,” there is another option. Instead of having the administration review issues of The Revelation, our editors can be the ones responsible to review stories in their sections and give constructive criticism to the writer. This approach is more personal, since the editor can talk one on one with the writer and give solutions for a revision.

I know I am asking a lot of the administration, but I do want to acknowledge that writing on The Revelation is a privilege and with every privilege come responsibility. I want to ask the administration to allow us to have a trial run with independently publishing our magazine. If we are not responsible with our privilege, the administration has ever right to take that privilege away from us.

I implore the SACS administration to please reconsider how they deal with The Revelation. If you allow such a great program to fall into the depths of obscurity, you will lose so much creativity, and so much potential from the students. Here in the journalism room, we don’t just write stories, we learn skills that we will be able to use for the rest of our lives.