Focus of fire RA story off-the-mark

By Brent Baughman

Well, Beacon. You really blew it. You had one opportunity to lend your 9/27 issue’s juicy story about the fired RAs at least a semblance of journalistic legitimacy by focusing on the ramifications for on-campus student life when an already strapped RA system (i.e. Doubletree, Marriott) loses three valuable members. Instead, you quoted a single freshman lament about the harshness of the RAs’ punishment. Not a word of attention was paid to what steps must now be taken by OHRL to fill their vacated spots, or what will be done in the meantime. The excitement of a lurid scoop left you with a jaundiced story filled with details irrelevant to anyone outside the circumstance and already known by anyone living it. If Emersonians wanted to be cheapened zombies of gossip culture, we’d read Perez Hilton. Oh, wait.