The Oracle is a completely student-run paper. That’s why we were so surprised to read the letter that appears above.

The PART Committee has taken issue with two editorials about the special monthly character-building lessons that are part of the school’s new program to be Prepared, Accountable, Respectful and Truthful. We’d like to address the committee’s concerns.

We understand that, according to the PART Committee, The Oracle needs to do better “fact-checking.” We have been criticized for expressing our views, however, and challenged to “do something about it.”

The Oracle staff does its best to check all stories for accuracy, both grammatical and factual. We deeply apologize for any errors that may have appeared in the February 7 and February 21 editorials, but wonder why the committee did not point those errors out.

To specifically address other points the committee made in its letter-to-the-editor, we believe that our views about the PART lessons were misconstrued. We did not imply, nor do we believe, that there is “no student involvement” in the PART program. In fact, we acknowledged the student-made bullying video explicitly in the February 7 editorial.

In reference to the statement that we called the program “stupid”: We honestly feel the idea behind the PART lessons is excellent. We did not downgrade the values being put forth in each PART lesson, but merely criticized the way in which the material has been presented this year to the student body.

We’d also like to clarify our concerns about the Wall of Intolerance. The student body was never informed that the wall was a student’s Capstone project—had we known, that particular lesson probably would have been better received by the students. Teens usually respond more positively to a peer-run activity than one that comes from adults.

Students should have been informed, in the interest of full disclosure, that the Wall of Intolerance was a Capstone project. If this student worked as hard as the committee’s letter implies, and we have no doubt that she did, she should have been recognized for her efforts at the beginning of the lesson.

In an ideal world, students would respect and participate fully in the lesson regardless of who put it together, but in the real world of public high school, an action has a greater impact coming from a student than from figures of authority, who are perceived as “forcing” the activity on a captive audience.

The main point of our February 7 editorial was that in order to get students to do “grown-up” things such as respect one another and their surroundings, one must first treat them as adults, or at least not like children. We believe that the PART lessons have been geared toward a younger age group and would be perfect for teaching elementary or middle school-aged students, but fall short of the level of maturity of high school.

If you want to create an environment where people are kind to one another and share mutual respect, you must first provide a level of respect to us. These lessons make students feel looked down upon and when they feel like they are being treated like children, students tend not to make the effort to make the activity worthwhile–they instead regress to that lower level.

The problem, then, becomes quite simple: Most elementary school students do not live in an environment of mutual respect; they live in an environment of youthful innocence and fear of punishment by adults. The difference between treating sixth-graders like sixth-graders and treating high-schoolers like sixth-graders is that sixth-graders still fear being reprimanded, while high school students have numbed out to such punishment.

Finally, in response to your challenge to The Oraclestaff to create a PART lesson that better reaches the students, we sadly cannot accept. Our Journalism Code of Ethics, a pledge of good journalism tactics signed by every newspaper and yearbook student, prohibits us from taking this on. The Code of Ethics states outright that, “we report the news, we do not make the news.” This document, which governs our program and the way we do our jobs, states that we are responsible for reporting and commenting on the news; it isn’t our job to create newsworthy events, or participate in policy development. Creating a PART lesson would put us in the position of “making news,” in violation of our ethics code.

But we do have a suggestion for the April PART lesson. Provide each teacher with a class set of the two Oracle editorials which the committee finds offensive, the letter-to-the-editor written by the PART Committee that is printed above and this response. Then, open up discussion, asking students their thoughts on the roles of both The Oracle and the PART program in our school.

We’d also like to repeat our belief stated in the February 21 editorial: All Spartans need to put the “R” back into doing their PART.

To read the committee’s letter please click here: https://www.theoracleonline.org/viewpoint/2011/03/24/committee-responds-to-editorial/

Below are links to the editorials referenced in this letter

Feb 21 issue editorial: https://www.theoracleonline.org/viewpoint/2011/02/24/the-%e2%80%98r%e2%80%99-in-part-has-been-lost/

Feb 7 issue editorial: https://www.theoracleonline.org/viewpoint/2011/02/11/part-lessons-poorly-executed/