To the Editor:

Yesterday’s edition of the Yale Daily News was a disgrace to journalism, reminiscent of the Chicago Daily Tribune’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline gaffe the day after the 1948 presidential election. The front page of the News pictured the three other YCC Presidential candidates, R. David Edelman, Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, and Steven Syverud, but failed to include me.

My exclusion from this photograph was clearly intentional; the editors knew that I was running for president. I am left to believe that the News’ actions were motivated by its disdain and its animosity toward anyone affiliated with Rumpus and the Party of the Rump. If the Yale Daily News ever wants to rid itself of its status as a smug, self-satisfied organ of the establishment, it needs to get over its own insecurities, even if that’s at the cost of having to print “news.”

Technically, I have more of a right than the other three candidates to run in this election because all three committed campaign infractions earlier in the week. Unlike them, I have committed none. Whether or not the News later deems my presidential platform as ridiculous or objectionable is irrelevant to its obligations as a newspaper. There should never be a point in which a news organization can make assumptions or take for granted what is fact, and in this case, who deserves to run for YCC president.

Sam Penziner ’07

April 5, 2005