It is no surprise to long-time Chimes staffers that the administration doesn't always have the highest opinion of Chimes and its writers, nor is it much of a surprise that some students at Calvin also do not always hold Chimes in the highest esteem.

After all, sometimes we run opinions with which some professors and students do not agree. Other times, we just plain mess up. We do not mean to do so and we certainly regret when we do, but it does happen. We will concede that and we will correct it when it happens.

What does surprise Chimes writers and editors over and over again is the perception that Chimes is somehow out to ruin Calvin's reputation or just anger the community for the pleasure of seeing a reaction.

What does surprise Chimes staffers is that the Fridays at Calvin folk have a fear of the newspaper and take special pains to preview issues before the official Fridays program begins each week.

What does surprise Chimes writers is that there seems to be a general distrust of our work and our abilities to produce quality journalism despite the years of experience some of the editors bring to the staff.

What does surprise Chimes editors are weekly accusations of biases in articles and a negative slant in the writing style.

This editorial is a long-overdue response to those critiques and judgments of our newspaper.

If Chimes has a bias, it is a student-directed, student-based bias. Chimes writers, editors, copy editors and layout editors are students. Our primary audience is students. We are here to be a voice for the students first, the administration and the faculty and staff second. As such, our articles may sometimes be perceived to be biased toward students. Anything less from a college newspaper would jeopardize the best interests of the students by putting the college's purposes before student interests.

Need a few examples? We have plenty. First, following the publication of Christian Bell's article last week about the controversial Beets Hall shirts, John Witte, one of the administrators interviewed for the story, submitted a letter to the editor for this week complaining that Bell's article was factually incorrect and gave unnecessary publicity to the shirts.

Bell's article addressed an issue being discussed on campus. The shirts are bright red and extremely recognizable. Not discussing the shirts would neglect our duty as the college's newspaper. When Bell interviewed Witte, he double-checked the basic facts of the story, the facts he used in his article. What more can be asked of a writer than confirming the facts of the story? If the facts he had were wrong and confirmed anyway, that is not his fault.

Second, two weeks ago we ran a story about John Doe* and his experiences with Financial Services. Following that article, we were accused by one professor of showing a bias towards students and international student issues. We were approached with the story by a Chimes staff member. We received corroborating accounts from other international students, some of which were not given on the record. We decided that running the article was the proper way of serving our community. Even if such instances are rare, their infrequency does not condone their existence.

Certainly our biases are not limited to student issues only. A fair number of professor-related topics, including salary and the Christian school requirement, have caught our attention on a consistent basis over the course of the year.

This is not to say that we don't strive for fair, impartial news articles, because we do. We make every attempt to meet with the right people to get the correct information for our articles. We take copious notes and, when the situation merits doing so, we call a source to double-check anything that does not seem to be correctly quoted. When possible, we tape interviews as well.

Sometimes additional sources are not available. When that happens, we have to decide if an article can wait until the following week's newspaper or if it will lose any sense of timeliness if postponed. This is not always an easy decision.

Above all, we aim for an accurate presentation of the facts. In doing so, we have been told we are too conservative (well, rarely, but it is theoretically possible), too liberal (happens all the time), writers of yellow journalism, writers of tabloid journalism and writers of sensational journalism. We were even compared once to The Star by a member of the administration. (We always wondered how this administrator knew enough about The Star to make such a comparison, but I digress.)

Some readers say that Chimes has an agenda, but has Chimes ever not had an agenda? Chimes has had as many agendas as it has had editors over the past 96 years and each year, some readers agree with the agenda, while others do not. Don't talk to us about ``the good old days'' at Calvin, when everyone shared the same political views and Chimes was a well-respected representative of the college's best public façade, because glancing through old issues from any year proves otherwise.

Despite any perceived appearances to the contrary, we do have a vested interest in this college. When we write editorials or perspective pieces that criticize Calvin, they are meant to be a means of communication between different groups on campus, particularly when we attempt to speak up for student groups who feel that they do not have an acknowledged voice.

We understand that we do not speak in a vacuum and that what we write will be seen outside of our own community. Because of that, we do try to present as much background information as possible to give articles their proper context. But we will not ignore issues being discussed at Calvin on the likelihood of the story being picked up by outsiders and being misunderstood by those not directly involved in our community. We are, we hope, better journalists than that.

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