The Red and Black

Who amongst us aint driv drunk from time to time? She aint no different from the rest of yall. Tell it like it is! Let he amongst yall without sin cast the first stone!

Mable, what should they have done then, let her drive on and get killed and kill other people?

Assuming she's guilty as charged, this wasn't a party stunt. It was gruesome death waiting to happen.

Most people never drive drunk, believe it or not.

MC, you're correct. I don't believe, as mable does, that everyone has driven drunk. It is a senseless act that is irresponsible and reprehensible. Putting others' lives in danger like that, not to mention your own, is downright stupid. There's no excuse for it, and Ms. Gibbons was correct in resigning from her office.

The University, after all that has happened with the changing alcohol policy and the national press for the death of a student a while back, cannot afford to have one of its prominent faces be clouded by a DUI. I applaud her decision to step down and hope that SGA and the University can move past it.

But the decision of the Red & Black to publish this article weeks after it would have been considered "news" is flat unethical journalism. Print news as it happens. That's what a reputable newspaper would and should do. Don't wait to print this article until the first day of class so you can start the new semester with a bang. We all know the R&B needs all the ploys it can get to keep students from just flipping to the crossword and Sudoku, but belatedly defaming a member of the student body is unnecessary and also irresponsible. I hope in the future the R&B news team can print news as it happens, not just when it would be best to lure in readers. Thanks for sitting on an important piece of news and allowing the student body to be the last to know.

Eric,

Did you stop to think that maybe the Red & Black had not published earlier because they just found out? Reading about it in this article was the first time many active SGA members had heard of the story. Maybe SGA were the ones being irresponsible by trying to cover this whole thing up.

SGA Member,

I seriously doubt that SGA was trying to cover this up. President Bowers made her statement for everyone to read. If the R&B didn't find out about this until weeks later, then they are at fault for shoddy reporting, though I doubt that this is the case, either. I believe the R&B's reason for printing this on the first day of classes, the first day that anyone would pick up a paper, is so that the student body would be informed of this pertinent information regarding their own governing body.

Where could one find this statement that President Bowers supposedly made?

With the zeal that the R&B uses in its reporting and researching for the Crime Watch on campus and around Athens, I seriously doubt they didn't know what was going on. And even if they didn't know that Gibbons was resigning from her post, following the trail from the DUI would have led them to her resignation as soon as it happened. I'm not faulting "shoddy reporting," I'm faulting shoddy decision-making on the editorial staff's part.