I have declared that I wouldn’t write for a while every-single-time I have gotten involved with a newly formed, or forming, outlet, without fail. It’s not that I don’t want to write but rather that I enjoy watching these things blossom from behind-the-scenes while helping with whatever I can. Unfortunately for me—but fortunately for the editors—something inevitably upsets me to the point that I have to “put pen to paper.”

Now is that time.

I am immensely disappointed in the Daily Emerald, the newspaper of record on the University of Oregon campus for which I was a reporter from 2019 through 2020

That is because on April 2, around 5 p.m., news broke—but certainly not from any Eugene-based outlet—that an international student at the university had been charged with a currently unconfirmed crime and, subsequently, had their visa revoked by the Department of Homeland Security.

Since then, three additional international students have had their visas revoked and are facing possible deportation.

Why the Daily Emerald took until the morning of April 10 to report on any of them is beyond my comprehension. In fact, they published two articles the same morning: one about the initial revocation and another about the additional three.

They didn’t even report on the initial instance of a student’s visa being revoked. The paper only did so after three more visa revocations brought the total to four and, apparently, the thought process was, “Hey, we can get more content out of this than just one article.”

This is beyond disappointing—it’s reprehensible.

Was this the result of administrative string-pulling in light of the current U.S. Department of Education investigation into UO and 44 other colleges nationwide? Is it the result of an absentee “breaking news shift” on the news desk? Or is this the result of pure cowardice?

I wish I knew the answer and, ultimately, I am calling for the following individuals to explain to the UO community why the newspaper of record on campus was silent on this for more than 10 days:

• Editor-in-Chief Tristin Hoffman;
• Digital and Print Managing Editors Alicia Santiago and Mathias Lehman-Winters, respectively;
• Campus News Editor Jasmine Saboorian;
• Publisher and President Eric Henry;
• and Vice President of Operations Kathy Carbone

If the answer truly was politics, I encourage those who made and supported the decision to be silent to resign immediately and allow those who want to report on campus news to timely do so and lead by example. If the silence was because the outlet was investigating the visa revocations and planned to report about them, they should have said as much.

But absolute silence was, and is, unacceptable; it is complicity.