To the Editor:
In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a former editor of The Dartmouth, much in the same way that Kalie Jackson '07 is a former softball player.
Jackson posed the question "Is The Dartmouth not supposed to be encouraging school spirit and trying to get students to attend games?" ("Keep bias out of sportswriting," April 5). The answer is no, that is not even remotely what The Dartmouth is supposed to be doing. The Dartmouth as an institution has no obligation to promote athletics, nor should it. It is the newspaper, not your cheerleading squad in print. Reporting for the purpose of "supporting" the team would be inappropriately biased. It reports on them because sports are an important part of student life at the College.
Encouraging school spirit and trying to get students to attend games is what the teams are supposed to be doing. Winning, in the case of the softball team, could potentially help its cause. According to the Dartmouth Athletics website, the team this season is 6-17. The results of the prior two seasons were not published explicitly, so I took it upon myself to count the wins and losses. 15-21 last year, 10-26 the year before. I doubt the editors wake up Monday morning thinking, "gosh, I hope those athletes are out there telling people to read the sports section today." The newspaper has the same right to ignore your request for a new writer or editor as the softball team does to ignore a fan's request to pull a pitcher.
The Dartmouth tends to employ editors and writers for its sports staff who are fans, friends of players or former players. It is a volunteer job, after all, so usually those people who know and enjoy the games are the ones who will agree to that role. If anything, the coverage tends to end up printing with an overly rosy slant. Instead of whining about what was at worst an immature double entendre and at best a relief from the repetition of the term "pair," you might want to remind the athletes that, for better or for worse, it is their performance on the field that will impact school spirit and attendance, not the perspective of an independent student organization.
