Over the past few days, we at the Maroon-Newshave been humbled by the overwhelming response from our readers.

To be clear: the article “On Catfighting” should not have been published. In our editorial process, we believe it is our duty to publish opinions regardless of whether we agree or disagree with them. However, it is clear that our greater responsibility is to the truth, and when an article makes unsubstantiated claims that denigrate specific groups, it does not belong in our newspaper. The Maroon-Newsregrets publication of this opinion piece and apologizes to those in our campus community who were offended.

We are taking a number of steps to ensure that something like this does not

happen again, and we hope this reflects our responsiveness to our readers’ concerns. Specifically, we are changing our submission policy to solidify our responsibility in deciding which submission pieces deserve to be included in our newspaper. Although it was an unofficial part of our process, we are adding specific language that ensures claims expressed in the “Commentary” section are backed up with identifiable and reasonable sources of evidence. This phrase has been highlighted on B-1. We believe this specific tenant of our submission policy will guide our editorial process and make us much more cautious and mindful of our content.

On a separate note, this article raised concerns about plagiarism in the pages of the Maroon-News. The Maroon-Newshas a zero-tolerance policy regarding plagiarism, and while the editorial staff will be first to express faith in our writers and the belief that this was an isolated incident, we take this policy very seriously. Moving forward, we will be much more vigilant in our editorial process, and have implemented a number of internal changes to ensure our writers are representing themselves, our staff and the newspaper honorably.

We look forward to continuing to produce a combination of high-quality news and commentary to students, faculty, staff, residents of Hamilton and members of the

greater Colgate community.