To the Executive Editors and Advisors of The Equinox,
The Executive Board of the Social Activities Council (SAC) would like to address the recent articles published in your Newspaper regarding Spring Concert, Keene State Calling and the organization as a whole. The mission of The Equinox is to “promote the free flow of information, to protect the First Amendment, to stimulate high standards in the practice of journalism and to foster excellence among student journalists”. Despite our advisor having a conversation with the Managing Editor prior to printing the April 4th edition of the paper to clarify facts, it is apparent The Equinox staff and editors have failed to meet their mission through lack of providing factual information in an ethical manner, and a failed attempt to portray the entire story in a balanced way. These articles are written through vast generalizations and opinions solely from the writers themselves, instead of on factual information.
SAC would like to inform the students of Keene State College with the correct information on the largest concerns. First, the name of our organization is the Social Activities Council, not the Student Activities Council, as mentioned in the articles by Adrianna Daniels and Adriana Sanchez. Keene State College enrolls about 3300 students as of Fall 2018, not “roughly 5000” as mentioned in the article by Lindsay Gibbons. This has a direct correlation to the amount of funds our organization is given as well as the selection of space for events and allocated tickets.
One of the greatest and most pressing questions that SAC has encountered is “why is the spring concert being held in the Mabel Brown Room” and “why are they selling more than its capacity?” The answer to these questions are that SAC is holding the concert in this location in order to provide students with a high quality artist with our given budget, along with following our mission to provide a diverse array of events for all interests throughout the year. The Mabel Brown Room can safely hold 748 standing people, not 250, and this information can easily be found inside of the space itself. There are not 748 tickets because creating the stage barricade limits the amount of space for people to safely gather, per City of Keene Fire Codes.
Lindsay Gibbons mentions that not all students are included in the selection of the Spring Concert artist, and not everyone had a say. Every student received SAC’s annual survey, as sent from Kemal Atkins’ VPSA email account on September 27, 2018 at 10:18AM. Everystudent had the opportunity to select artists that SAC could afford this year, as well as the opportunity to provide open-ended feedback. In addition to this, SAC has weekly meetings every Thursday at 6pm and weekly office hours where we encourage students to stop by, provide feedback, and learn about our process and policies. By stating that “many students were upset that they had no chance to give their input,” The Equinox printed false information as factual information. Overall, as an organization, SAC hopes that in the future, The Equinox reaches out to us regarding our organization and events so that we can create a more cohesive relationship between SAC and The Equinox. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these inaccuracies and all future events so that published articles are as accurate as possible.
Thank you,
The Social Activities Council