Back To Work
The events at the end of last term that led to the resignations of the staff of The Oxford Student will be familiar to most students and now sit firmly in the past. Every member of last term’s staff who had intended to carry on working for the paper has decided to come back for Trinity term.
However the episode still raised fundamental questions about the role of The Oxford Student: the influence of its editorial voice, the nature of its relationships with the Student Union and OSSL, the rights and responsibilities of editorship and ultimately, its editorial independence.
The Oxford Student understands the Student Union never intended to curtail or undermine the editorial independence of the newspaper but we believe the way in which the disagreement was handled and the absence of any formal framework for resolving it meant that had the newspaper’s Editors complied with OSSL’s demands in 7th week, the editorial independence of the paper would have been fundamentally and irrevocably compromised.
The Oxford Student considers the events of last term to be in the past and welcomed the contractual and methodological framework that was agreed with representatives of OSSL at the end of last term – it is upon this basis that the staff have agreed to return to work – and we feel the working relationship we have with OSSL and the personal relationships we have with its members have been suitably rebuilt.
Similarly, The Oxford Student welcomed the results of the negotiation process because the framework they created will ensure the events of last term can never happen again. The Oxford Student will come off the presses each Thursday this term and the paper’s internal machinations may therefore seem irrelevant to students.
It is however important, that those who read the newspaper understand that The Oxford Student is again being written and edited by what is a natural progression from last term’s staff box, and most importantly; remains entirely editorially independent.
21st Apr 2005