“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
–U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights
Our responsibilities:
Without the first amendment, our paper would not be able to provide this community with accurate and fair information, free of censorship or propaganda. However, with this great liberty of free expression, comes great responsibility.
To make sure that we at the Daily Sundial fulfill those responsibilities, we churn all our written and visual content through an entire day’s process of editing and revision by the time you pick up an issue.
The process begins with the page editors, who assign our staff writers, contributors and photographers to go out into the community and conduct original reporting. Our writers come back to the editors with stories, which from then on are revised, fact checked, sometimes rewritten, and then are sent to copy editors, who scour the stories for any errors our page editors might miss. Photos, multimedia and illustrations also go through an editing process with our photo, multimedia and visual editors. Final stories are sent to our production staff, who makes all our content visually appealing and easy to digest.
Our Editor in Chief, Ken Scarboro, makes sure that every single part of this process synthesizes cohesively and efficiently. He makes sure all the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed and has the final word on ethical and philosophical decisions which need to be made before going to print.
By the time all this is done, it can get pretty late in the evening. We are students, just like you, and we apologize for imperfections we know are bound to slip through our fingers and past our eyes.
Your responsibilities: Commenting Policy
At the Sundial, we understand that news is a push and pull system. As much as we believe in disseminating information to our audience, we also value feedback from our readers. On our website, we allow commenting and encourage open discussion about our articles.
Comments do not go through a screening process before they are published. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that threaten or incite violence, are derogatory of others on the basis of identity (religion, race, gender, etc.), are posted by authors who misrepresent themselves, or are obscene, fraudulent, or libelous. Moreover, any libelous comments made by users are not the publication’s responsibility nor do we endorse any comments made by non-staff members.
Commenting closes two weeks after an article’s publication. This makes it easier for our staff members to monitor comments and helps us avoid spam.
Currently, users are allowed to post anonymously on articles, needing only to put in an email address and provide a username. Within the next week we will be changing our system to require users to sign in with a Facebook account in order to comment. As a staff, we hope this will encourage accountability amongst our readership.
