2
LETTERS
The Daily Beacon • Wednesday, March 22, 2023
DAILY BEACON STAFF AND POLICY INFORMATION
EDITORIAL
Letter from the Editor: To the staff of The Alligator DANIEL DASSOW Editor-in-Chief
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Daniel Dassow MANAGING EDITOR: Abby Ann Ramsey COPY CHIEF: Olivia Hayes NEWS EDITOR: Autumn Hall ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR: Emma Co�ey SPORTS EDITOR: Andrew Peters ASST. SPORTS EDITOR: Eric Woods PHOTO EDITOR: Ericksen Gomez-Villeda DESIGN EDITOR: Bella Hughes DIGITAL PRODUCER: Lauren Ward PAGE DESIGNERS: Emma Fingeret, Rhylee Gross, Julia Paulman, Chloe Black SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Jackie Dremel COVER PHOTO: Cole Moore
ADVERTISING/PRODUCTION
ADVERTISING MANAGER: Cullen Askew ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES: Shelby Coppock, Jacob Stromatt ADVERTISING PRODUCTION ARTISTS: Everrett Hurst, Jean Mendoza
CONTACTS TO REPORT A NEWS ITEM OR SUBMIT A PRESS RELEASE, please email editorinchief@utdailybeacon.com or call (865) 974-2348 TO PLACE AN AD, please email admanager@utk.edu. LETTERS POLICY: Letters to the Editor must be exclusive to The Daily Beacon and cannot have been submitted to or published by other media. Letters should not exceed 400 words and can be edited or shortened for space. Letters can also be edited for grammar and typographical errors, and Letters that contain excessive grammatical errors can be rejected for this reason. Anonymous Letters will not be published. Authors should include their full name, mailing address, city of residence, phone number and e-mail address for verification purposes. Letters submitted without this information will not be published. The preferred method to submit a Letter to the Editor is to email the Editor-in-Chief.
UT President Randy Boyd and UF President Ben Sasse. To The Independent Florida Alligator, I am writing to you because we now have something in common beyond our status as student papers. Our university presidents are both (ex)-Republican politicians. Granted, our President Randy Boyd only ran for office, but the Board of Trustees approved him as interim president the month after he lost his primary bid for governor of Tennessee to Bill Lee, who is, by all accounts, his good friend. What does it mean to have a once-political sloganeer as a college president? Of course, it
COVER PHOTO: UT Volunteers basketball player Jonas Aidoo (0) contests his opponent’s shot attempt during a NCAA tournament game against the Duke University Blue Devils at Amway Center in Orlando. (Cole Moore, Contributor)
rightfully leads UF students to wonder if he will be an advocate for them. There is another commonality between our states that makes Boyd and Sasse’s experience as politicians all the more important. Our governors are jockeying for national attention to see who can create the most outrageous headlines (spoiler alert: you’re winning). As student journalists, we are used to being called biased hacks when we do our job and attend to power differentials that create lesser outcomes for marginalized groups. But the news is never all bad, and sometimes anger creates real change. I am hopeful that Sasse will find ways to stand up for students. In fall 2021, when President Boyd planned to pay for breakfast for a fundraiser for an ultraconservative state senator who supported a ban on gay marriage and the “Stop the Steal” movement, he quickly backed out of the event and hosted a town hall to hear students’ concerns. I gained a lot of respect for Boyd in that moment, as he publicly apologized and made changes. Sasse’s tenure is likely to be a mixed bag of missteps, apologies, accomplishments, further alienations and growth. Covering all sides of a public figure is difficult but important work that we have striven to accomplish. On the other side of all the anger, you all are in a position to create incredible journalism at a pivotal moment for Florida and the university, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
Letter from the Managing Editor: The Tennessee I know ABBY ANN RAMSEY Managing Editor
CORRECTIONS POLICY:It is the Daily Beacon’s policy to quickly correct any factual errors and clarify any potentially misleading information. Errors brought to our attention by readers or sta� members will be corrected and printed on page two of our publication. To report an error please send as much information as possible about where and when the error occurred to managingeditor@utdailybeacon.com, or call our newsroom at (865) 974-5206. The Daily Beacon is published by students at The University of Tennessee on Monday and Thursday during the fall and spring semesters. The o�ces are located at 1345 Circle Park Drive, 11 Communications Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-0314. The newspaper is free on campus and is available via mail subscription for $200/ year or $100/semester. It is also available online at: www.utdailybeacon.com
means student protest at first. As editor of a smaller paper, I have admired your multifaceted, persistent coverage of the backlash against the election of Sen. Ben Sasse to the office of president of the University of Florida. It’s ancient history by this point, but there was fierce protest of the election of Randy Boyd as interim president by the UT Board of Trustees on Sept. 25, 2018. Students began using the hashtag #RunOutRandy and a student who rushed the podium at the board meeting was removed by cops. At issue, of course, was Boyd’s campaign for governor, during which he was open about his conservative Christian values, his antiabortion stance and his support for the Second Amendment. But at some point, the protests stop and the president gets to work and then our job as student journalists becomes harder. Anger is easy to cover. I’ve love interviewing protestors because they give such juicy, rage-y quotes. But Sasse’s Republicanism and his status as a politician will now operate in much more subliminal ways which are harder to uncover and decode. At UT, this has meant enlisting the legislature’s help in creating more workers for Tennessee, a goal of Boyd’s which is admirable but has also led us to experience growth at an unsustainable rate and has alienated some faculty. I do not know what Sasse’s story will be at UF, but he has a much longer voting record, which
The Grist Mill at Dollywood (Steve Carr/Creative Commons) I got on a plane the first day of spring break and was relieved to be leaving the state to catch a break from the recent days of exhausting politics. I’d been angry and confused because of the legislature’s anti-drag measures, further attempts to regulate health care and a bill that would allow guns on college campuses. The break lasted a few hours until I met some girls my age on the plane who were from some-
where in the midwest. When they realized I went to UT, they immediately had questions. “Oh my god, what’s it like in Tennessee right now?” one of them said. They knew everything that had recently happened in my home state. I told them that it had been really hard and exhausting and the future seemed unclear. I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be from Tennessee. I used to dislike being from Tennessee due to some internalized anti-southernness. It took some maturing for me to realize how much I love this state, but as I’ve reflected on my life, I can say I’m proud to be from here. But at that moment, I did not feel proud. These people perceived a Tennessee that does not feel like the Tennessee I know. The Tennessee I know is beauty. It’s driving down Pellissippi Parkway and seeing the sun set over the Smoky Mountains as clouds surround the peaks — an experience I didn’t realize I was so lucky to have until I visited Texas. It’s playing in the backyard every hot summer day, picking honeysuckles and tolerating the humidity, only stopping when dusk comes to tell you it’s time to go in and nurse your bug bites. Tennessee is spending all day at Dollywood not just because it’s the actual happiest place on earth, but because being from the same place as Dolly Parton is simply awesome. Tennessee life moves slow but not as slow as the rest of America likes to think. It’s slow in the
way that when you go on a walk, you can pause to take in the beauty and move at your own pace, admiring your green surroundings, even though the pollen is horrendous. Tennesseans pride themselves on community as people make friends in the most unexpected places. This place has gone through many changes. Everyone’s flocking here and it’s starting to feel tight. But we can deal with being popular. We can easily welcome new people here. But what is hard to deal with is the state legislature’s attempts to frame Tennessee, my home, as a place that is hateful, exclusionary, backwards and a leader in a widespread wave of altright movements sweeping the nation. I don’t want Tennessee to become a place that I’m ashamed of. We’re constantly making national headlines that feel shameful. Yet, I’m usually able to take a step back and remind myself that our government officials rarely represent the Tennessee I know. This time, it feels harder to remember that. But I still love Tennessee and know deep down it has more to offer than what people see in national headlines. And that’s what I tried to communicate to my new plane friends. I basically answered their question by saying that it’s really hard, but that I have to remind myself that Tennessee is resilient and there are Tennesseans who will continue to push for what’s right.