Henry Turberfield, '26
“We envision a school where a deep sense of community and belonging pervades all aspects of school life. In order to realize the goals of our Mission and Vision, Ensworth must actively strive to be a diverse and inclusive community of learners that engages collectively In search of Truth.”
The above quotes come from our very own vision statement. While our newspaper upholds these core principles by empowering students to write on diverse topics and an array of viewpoints, it is littered between articles about politics. That’s mainly thanks to our own Jacob Francy. He’s written a massive 22 articles this school year. This itself wouldn’t be an issue, but Jacob is a raging liberal. His articles take a tone of trying to be informative, but he is largely presenting information that is often biased. Jacob will provide facts that help one side and just straight up criticize the other. Plenty of students have given Jacob grief, but at the end of the day, The Ensider simply needs someone who could argue with Jacob and take the perspective of the other side.
Peter Byrant, a sophomore at Ensworth, notes many of these criticisms as well. Recently, after reading back on one of Jacob’s articles, Peter commented, “This article invokes the personal opinion of the author. Francy is not listed as an opinion writer. He is, however, described as a ‘[g]lorified school socialist and liberal.’ Of course, it is perfectly fine to allow your writers to have personal political opinions. It crosses a line, however - or it should - when those opinions begin to breach subjects that should be reported strictly objectively. These would optimally include issues such as politics, national security, and even gender-based issues.”
Peter Byrant is very open about his political views, but when he writes, he typically separates objective from subjective. If the intention of one’s articles is to be informative, they should be truthful by providing a non-biased opinion on the matter, one that highlights critical points made on both sides. We don’t often see Jacob doing this. Instead, he is focusing on one side, while presenting an argumentative and sometimes hateful tone. To combat this, we either need two writers to represent at least two political parties, or his platform needs to shift to being more informative on everyday politics.
As part of our school’s mission and vision, everyone is allowed to have and express one’s opinion. We see this around our tables in class, at lunch, and even on the newspaper team. While I can easily criticize Jacob’s aggressive approach to politics just the same as someone can argue with a peer in a harkness discussion, he’s managed to find his authentic voice as a writer, even receiving recognition from local editors in our community. Since our motto here is “In search of truth,” we want Jacob to do the same. Looking into next school year, we the people would like Jacob to amend his approach to be more informative, rather than opinionated.
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