The Towerlight is going to talk about race
By: Carley Milligan, Editor-in-Chief
One initiative I was determined to put into action this semester at The Towerlight was the addition of headshots next to each writer’s byline. While this may be something we are still trying to make uniform across the paper, I feel that allowing readers to see who actually wrote an article helps to make us as student reporters more accessible.
I also think that this helps to increase the transparency of our articles. We aren’t just hiding behind a byline, we are showing readers who we are, what we look like and how to contact us via our Twitter handles.
This initiative, I realized, became an especially important addition in light of this week’s cover story about race and diversity. As you can clearly see from Senior Editor Cody Boteler’s and my own headshots, we are white. And writing about race as a white person is a tricky thing indeed.
It’s pretty clear, to me, at least, and I hope that it is apparent to those who read the cover story – and we apologize for the extreme length of the article, but there was so much worth talking about that we didn’t even get to cover – but the issue of race and diversity is an incredibly important and under-discussed conversation both nationally and on Towson’s campus.
Therefore, it has been imperative to me since the start of the semester that this conversation, among others, was brought to light. The trick, however, was how we would take on writing about something that neither Cody nor myself have experienced, having lived under the protection of white privilege for our entire lives.
We found that the best way to start would be to conduct thorough conversations and interviews with those who had experienced these acts of racism on campus, and in turn, had begun taking part in organizations and programs to combat this inequality. We hope that this will help readers to see that we tried our best to be allies to these students by creating a platform for them to share their thoughts and experiences.
As always if you have any questions, comments or concerns after reading the article please feel free to reach out to editor@thetowerlight.
