At last week’s Associated Students Legislative Council meeting, the student government voted to freeze the Daily Nexus’ student approved lock-in fee because the newspaper refused to withdraw advertisements from Conquest Student Housing – a company currently boycotted by A.S.

The Nexus will not remove the advertisement because we believe in the first amendment, and because we believe that a wall exists between advertising and editorial content. If the Nexus editorial board influenced the policies of its advertising office, the advertising office could then influence the editorial board’s news articles and opinion section. Refusing advertisements based on politics is incredibly unethical.

We’d like to thank the five Leg Council members who voted against the resolution and A.S. President Jared Goldschen for having the courage to exercise his veto power.

But besides defending our stance and complimenting our supporters, the Nexus editorial staff would like to address a serious accusation brought up at Wednesday’s Leg Council meeting. Many members of the council alleged that the Nexus prints racist, sexist and homophobic language – all of which contribute to an unsafe campus.

Whether we agree with this charge does not matter; if our fellow students feel attacked or threatened, we owe it to them, and ourselves, to engage in an honest dialogue. This can take the form of letters to the editor, emails to the editor in chief, visits to our office, or at forums, such as the one scheduled to take place on Wednesday at 4 p.m. in the MultiCultural Center. While we were not officially invited to this “Town Hall Meeting about the Nexus,” the editors will be attending to talk to those who feel misrepresented in the paper. Please give us the opportunity to get to know you, and please give yourself the opportunity to get to know us.

Finally, we would like to address what seems to be an unfortunate confusion regarding our opinion section. Here are the basics of how we work:

All viewpoints are welcome. If it seems that a certain perspective has been neglected, it is because we have not received a column representing that opinion. For example, today you may notice an abundant number of letters to the editor in support of the Nexus. The reason you do not see letters in support of A.S. is because we did not receive any. We have seen the Facebook.com groups and know that A.S. has supporters, so we greatly encourage them to write in to us. We also encourage members of A.S. to submit regular columns informing the student body of their activities.

If you wish to respond to a news article or column, please write a 300-word or less letter to the editor. For original pieces, we allow columns of up to 700 words. Neither letters to the editor nor columns represent the views of the Nexus editorial board. Staff editorials, such as this one, reflect the majority opinion of Nexus editors and are carefully labeled with the “Staff Editorial” box.

Again, we at the Daily Nexus do not want anyone to feel left out. Please write to us.