Dear Readers,

As illustrated by a posting on XOJane on Thursday, the Crime Logs sections of The Daily Free Press have repeatedly published callous sub-headlines making light of serious issues and inadvertently exploiting victims of crime for humor. On behalf of the Board of Directors of The Daily Free Press, we sincerely apologize for these headlines and any other material that may have caused harm or offense.

Though Crime Logs have traditionally aimed to satirize harmless, victimless crimes, these examples demonstrate a lack of sensitivity and empathy on the part of several editors. As with all our content, our editorial staff accepts full responsibility for the offensive sub-headlines and asks that writers not be blamed for the mistakes of their editors. Going forward, the Free Press will publish Crime Logs with only serious headlines, in an effort to keep our student population aware of criminal activity and to give victims their due respect. We are updating past sub-headlines to reflect our new standards.

In addition to changing Crime Logs, we plan to begin mandatory sensitivity training for new editors at the start of each semester. We hope student groups and others will be interested in working with us. We believe these changes will build on other efforts the Free Press has made over the past year to improve its coverage of student affairs, its reputation and credibility and its sensitivity to crimes that continue to plague our campus.

Despite our shortcomings, we are proud of our writers and editors, who have worked diligently to provide independent coverage of issues most relevant to students. We firmly believe in the need for an independent student newspaper, at once to provide the student population with valuable information and perspectives and to train our student-journalists and editors. We do not take this issue lightly and hope to learn from our mistakes.

Sincerely,
Alex Nawar
Board of Directors Chairman
board@dailyfreepress.com