The only thing more difficult than fixing a mistake is admitting it ever happened.

Last week, I broke the first rule of reporting. I ran a story without first checking the facts.

In “Faculty vetoes outside speaker policy,” run on page seven of issue 10, I wrote that the Faculty Senate did not support the Student Government Association’s proposed outside speaker policy.

In SGA’s proposal, visitors who are not invited to campus by someone affiliated with Northern Kentucky University must apply to the Dean of Student’s Office at least five days before they plan to visit, and then disclose the content of the message they plan to speak about. Then, the dean’s office will determine if the visitors can speak and where they will be speaking.

My information came from an announcement made in SGA’s March 28 meeting, where Jamie Hazenfield, Jr., legislative liaison and vice presidential candidate, announced that the NKU faculty did not support the proposed policy because they thought it gave Dean Jeffrey Waple too much power.

What I should have done is get in touch someone on the Faculty Senate and get a copy of their meeting minutes to verify the vote and get information about what happened in the meeting.

If I had, I would have known that my primary source was wrong about the vote and only represented one side of the discussion at the meeting.

NKU faculty actually voted to support the proposed the policy. While some faculty were concerned about the dean having too much power, others were concerned about exposing children visiting campus to inappropriate messages.

For more information about the Faculty Senate’s vote, read our follow up story here.

Editorial by Cassie Stone