In typical Hamline style, little information has been provided to Hamline students about the departure of former Safety and Security Director Jim Schumann.

About four weeks ago, we at The Oracle set out to report on this story. We had questions about the circumstances surrounding Schumann’s departure, and what the search for a new director would include. We reached out to six individuals in the administration within the first week of working on the story in an attempt to answer some of our questions. None responded—not even to say we should be contacting someone else.

This stone wall is one that Oracle reporters have run into many times in the past. It’s a frustrating problem. We don’t want to dwell on past mistrust though, and we’d like to clear the slate and vocalize in print our intentions and purpose as the independent student newspaper of Hamline University.

Our goal as a paper is not to trash the university. Ultimately, we love Hamline and want to see this institution embrace its full potential. Unfortunately for our relationship with Public Relations, it isn’t our job to toot our own horn and only talk about all the things Hamline is doing well, but to point out the areas in which it needs to grow. We’re critical because we love this place. We chose to come here after all, and we chose to stay.

This doesn’t mean we feel the need to be critical all the time. We welcome suggestions from our readers—if you know of an event that the Hamline community should know about, tell us. We’d love to cover it. If you know of a student, Hamline alum/na or a faculty member who is doing something great/interesting, we’d love to write a feature on that individual.

To do our job, we need people to talk to us. Open, honest and willing communication is essential if we’re going to report on all sides of a story. At the collegiate level, knowledge of the inner workings of the institution should not be hidden from students or faculty for that matter, as it oftentimes is. As adults paying to be a part of this community, we should know what’s going on. If we have questions about an issue, someone should try to answer them—or at least respond with “no comment”.

If viewing us as adults isn’t enough motivation to keep us in the loop, maybe viewing us future potential donors will.

So please, to anyone who is in the position of answering questions, don’t just ignore us or any other student when we reach out to you about issues on campus. We want this university to be an open forum, where we can be up front and respectful with each other.

That means we need certain key individuals in the Hamline community to open up and trust us to do our job fairly. If this means we need to do things differently as journalists, please tell us. We at The Oracle want that conversation to happen. With our recent change in leadership, we want to get old grievances out in the open and start anew. So let’s not let it fester any longer.