By Ryan Broderick, Editor-in-Chief

Mr. FinkeIstein, I wanted to apologize that I could not get a hold of you by press time. I also wanted to explain my process on Wednesday.

             As I realized much of what my subjects were saying needed Resident Programming’s I quickly walked to your department on the second floor of the Student Center. Perhaps I should have gone on the Hofstra website for your name first, but has anyone ever been able to navigate the Hofstra.edu with any sort of success.

             At the Residential Programming office I spoke to a few of the employees there on Wednesday afternoon. All three of the women I spoke to passed me along to Dean Libman, who I spoke with multiple times that day, almost to the point of nuisance. 

             Public Safety also did not have the time to respond to anything.

             I understand frustration, as both administrators and Chronicle reporters lead incredibly busy lives. The reason I’m responding to this is because as much as I wish you could have been properly represented, our staff would like to be able talk to someone when these types of stories arise.

             We’ve been publishing Wednesday nights into Thursday mornings for as long as we’ve been an institution. Wouldn’t it make sense that departments had someone we could talk to on Wednesdays?

             Many of the top deans are receptive, but of course we’d like to get more people to talk to us, more specific sources. RAs can’t talk to us, Public Safety officers can’t speak with us, Wellness Center nurses really aren’t supposed to speak with us. If no one on the ground floor can talk to us then who are we to talk to?

             And to be completely and totally frank, I reached out to the anonymous RA in an attempt to get a fair and well-rounded piece upon realizing by Wednesday at 5 I still didn’t have a good representation from Residential Programming’s side.

             Unfortunately he didn’t give me anything close to what I expected and he decided to speak openly and honestly, requesting anonymity. I guess next time I won’t give an RA the opportunity to speak freely about actual policies and practices.

             Just as you would like to establish the expectation to be given the opportunity and courtesy of being interviewed I would hope that future Chronicle reporters would be able to track down the right administrators to talk to without being passed around. And I open this to the administrators of The University, leave doors open on Wednesdays. You can complain about how we work up until the deadline, but with classes and jobs, I think perhaps it’s not too lofty of a request.

             We always attempt to keep our coverage fair and balanced, but do administrators always attempt give us the typically brief 5 minutes required to cover our bases and make sure we have all sides. Accuse us of gotcha-journalism, but go down into the student center and see if students know absolutely anything about the administrators and directors that run Hofstra’s different departments and then ask them if they get passed from department to department. Of course, I’d never insinuate that administrators are difficult to track down.