We would like to congratulate the AHANA Leadership Council (ALC) and the GLBTQ Leadership Council (GLC) for their efforts at further transparency. By releasing budgets, these two groups have shown that they hold themselves accountable for the student funds allocated to them each year. We would take issue, however, with the manner in which the budget was released.

We find it extremely odd that the ALC repeatedly denied The Observer’s requests for a budget only to release a statement to The Heights in a manner which ensured that The Observer could not be the first to report on it. Furthermore, the ALC’s official statement gives no acknowledgment of the fact that Observer staff have been working for greater transparency in the ALC for months. The statement implies that the ALC issued the budget without being prompted by any source. We find the lengths that the ALC went to in order to avoid any contact with The Observer extremely troubling and flat out unprofessional.

We hope that personal politics played no role in the ALC’s decision because such politics would fundamentally undermine the efforts of the ALC to successfully connect, lobby for, and enhance student culture. This is an extremely disappointing turn of events for the ALC, particularly in light of the fact that many Observer staff members have worked to improve relations between the two organizations by sitting on panels, setting up informal discussions, and by attending an ALC meeting in order to meet members of the council.

Furthermore, the willful ignorance displayed by The Heights in the resulting news article raises questions about the publication’s journalistic integrity and ability to see the entirety of a story. It is highly doubtful that The Heights was unaware of The Observer’s efforts to achieve greater student government transparency and, by allowing the ALC to insinuate that the idea for transparency was originally theirs, the publication is complicit in misleading the Boston College community. Perhaps this apathy towards the quality of the information provided to the BC community on the part of The Heights is the most troubling aspect of all.

In the future, we would hope that The Heights pushes itself to become a publication that cannot be used as a tool for student organizations which seem to have grudges against other campus publications. A publication with such a rich history, immense resources, and dedicated readership should not feel threatened by less frequent campus publications and should instead work towards greater cooperation with these younger newspapers.

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