by Cara Muzik
Although The Mirror had consistently endorsed the losing candidate for the FUSA for years, the outcomes of the past two elections show that the support of Fairfield University’s school newspaper may be beginning to catch the eye of the student body.
The Fairfield University newspaper began voicing support for a certain candidate in FUSA elections in 2000 under Editor in Chief, Paul Pennelli, who originally established an editorial board. Before that, opinions were voiced by individual students in letters to the editor only.
In 2000 and the following two years, the candidate supported by The Mirror lost the FUSA presidency.
However, things changed in 2004 when Paul Duffy ’05, who was supported by The Mirror, was elected FUSA president. In the next academic year, Jessica DiBuono ’06, another Mirror choice, will fill the role.
DiBuono was grateful for the support of the newspaper during her campaign this spring.
“When I found out The Mirror was supporting me, I was thrilled that they felt I was the best candidate for the position of FUSA president,” DiBuono said. “The endorsement helped to validate a lot of the ideas I was trying to get out there, and it helped to know that people thought I would do a good job.”
Tara Lynch ’06, editor in chief of The Mirror sympathized with DiBuono’s excitement, but was unsure of the affect that the endorsements had on the student body in the past.
“I think that Mirror endorsements are more important to the candidates and other FUSA members,” Lynch said. “Ultimately, they may not sway the election, but they do allow the candidates to get formal, published feedback on their campaigns. An endorsement is mainly for us and for the candidates to see where they stand.”
Politics professor John Orman agreed with Lynch, questioning the impact of The Mirror on the final outcome of the FUSA elections.
“Because of the size of The Mirror, I’m not sure how big of an impact the endorsements actually have on the voting process,” he said. “I’m not sure that the student body is always aware of who the paper is endorsing as the next FUSA president, which means that the prediction is more of a coincidence than if The Mirror impacted the decisions of the student voters.”
Tom Pellegrino, assistant director of student affairs, recalled when he served Fairfield as the FUSA president. At that time, while The Mirror as a whole did not endorse candidates, certain writers expressed personal opinions leaning toward one candidate over the other, he said.
Like Orman, Pellegrino believes that, although having the support of The Mirror is encouraging for a candidate, an endorsement will not have a considerable effect on the opinion of students’ opinions.
The shortness of this year’s campaign period, which was a by-product of having to put the new constitution into effect, probably lessened the impact The Mirror’s endorsement would have ultimately had on the election,” Pellegrino said. “In other words, I think most voters had made their decision by the time the endorsement came out.”
One of this year’s FUSA presidential candidates, Ashlee Fox ’06, disagreed with Pellegrino and stressed the value of the support.
“The endorsement is the biggest piece of ‘free advertising’ the FUSA presidential candidates can get,” she said. “And to get it just a few days before the election when it is fresh in everyone’s mind is huge.”
Kara O’Connell ’06 agreed.
“If I don’t know anything about either of the candidates, but I see that one is backed by The Mirror, I’ll definitely vote for the one who other people think will do the best job,” she said.
Pellegrino argues that if certain steps are taken, The Mirror endorsement may help to attract voters to a certain candidate in the future.
According to Pellegrino, The Mirror’s greatest responsibility lies in covering a “middle ground” during the election season.
Dean of Students Mark Reed, who served as the FUSA president in the 1995-1996 school year, disagreed with Pellegrino, and believes that The Mirror should stay away from endorsing a candidate at all.
“I think the position pieces are best left to individual editorial writers who have developed the experience over time to do such reporting,” Reed said. “Given the time constraints of a four-year undergraduate experience, that is a real challenge, especially considering that many of the ‘lessons’ of college are not fully understood until months or years after graduation.”
According to Lynch, because the quality of The Mirror has improved over recent years, the number of students who take the paper very seriously has increased.
“A higher level of student concern is reflected in the increasing number of letters and feedback we get each week, and may explain why some students may take our endorsements seriously,” Lynch said.
“The Mirror staff in recent years has also made it a priority to watch FUSA closely and to thoroughly interview each candidate individually, so the editorial board may simply be making wiser choices,” she added. “It’s hard to say whether the campus climate is influencing editorial endorsements, or vice versa.”
Nevertheless, “it has become a tradition of the editorial board to endorse a candidate for FUSA president,” Lynch said. “And it is something that we will continue to do in the future.”
This story was difficult to write because I have never had people so excited and enthusiastic to voice their opinions before. I had such a huge amount of information to work with, that I almost felt that by trimming quotes, I wasn’t taking advantage of everything that I could have used. As of right now, the story is over 1,000 words and I could have gone much longer. It was really great to have so much information and opinion to work with, but at the same time, it was extremely difficult to go through and pull out the most interesting or relevant information when it all seemed worth saying.
Because the topic was somewhat dry, I had some trouble making it interesting. I feel like it’s just another one of those stories that should be written, but not everyone will necessarily read it because it’s just not that interesting of a topic. I had a lot of trouble with the lead, as well. I went through about ten leads before deciding on this one; I thought that a summary lead was the only appropriate approach for this story.
I felt that this topic was a little more difficult to grasp than the stories that I have covered in the past, so I asked my 15-year-old sister and my 23-year-old friend to read it and give me their input. My sister certainly had no difficulty understanding the story, which was reassuring. I didn’t have many AP issues in this story, because I have the most problems when it comes to courtesy titles. I didn’t really have to worry about that in this story.
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