Staff Box by Sara Foss

Review should remain objective

The Art Students Committee asked the Review not to print an arts section this week as part of Day Without Art.

An unusual request, yes. So instead of the normal five or six pages of arts coverage, this week's Review would not contain a word about any on-campus arts events happening this week.

Day Without Art is certainly a wor¡¡thy cause. It commemorates the loss of art works that were never made because their potential creators, victims of the AIDS epidemic, died before getting a chance to bring their visions and genius to the public eye.

What with Day Without Art, the AIDS quilt's arrival on-campus and the AIDS benefit dance all happening this week, members of the Oberlin community should realize and feel the effect of AIDS upon the world. And to those most affected by AIDS, perhaps the Review's failure to participate in Day Without Art appears insensitive and offensive.

But newspapers are not supposed to participate in events. They are supposed to report them. Their role is to inform and describe, and people base many of their decision-making on information they get from reading newspapers. Good newspapers attempt to inform and describe while remaining objective and detached. Even in sports stories. Even in arts stories. In all stories, it is important for reporters to capture emotions, but equally important that they leave their own emotions out of their articles.

There is an activist side of me that really would have liked to make a bold point about AIDS by not printing an arts section. But in my position as a journalist, I often have to stifle my activist side. I don't join student protests, even when I have strong beliefs about the issues involved. I want to make sure that I maintain my position as one who writes about the news, and I want to make sure that the Review does not become part of the news - something which has happened in the past and is always unpleasant for those involved.

I've talked to several people this week who weren't even sure what Day Without Art is, despite all-campus advertising. And after talking to these people, and considering the Art Students Committee's request, I thought about how the Review can do something for Day Without Art simply by doing what it is supposed to do - report and inform.

Arts events are happening on campus this week. Many of the people involved in those events would probably be unhappy if we didn't cover them. The Review is often contacted by people who want the arts events they are involved in to be covered, and it's the Review's responsibility to report on those events because they are happening. We have to report what is. We can't report (or not report, as the case may be) what something would be like. To not report certain events out of respect for a cause would be both poor journalism and unfair to those involved in the arts at Oberlin this week.

Perhaps the larger issue here is why arts events are even occurring on-campus this weekend. Because if there were no arts events, we wouldn't have anything to report on, and perhaps then people would be one-step closer to understanding what a Day Without Art is really like.

It is not the Review's job to pretend there isn't any art when there is. But imagine if arts events were not occurring on campus this weekend. Then we certainly wouldn't have anything to write about.