Corrections statement regarding print issue 43.1, Sept. 29, 2016.

The Coat of Arms’ staff seeks to deliver honest, comprehensive, and accurate coverage to the Menlo School community. Our first print issue of this school year did not fully achieve that goal, as we had some significant problems. We want to acknowledge these problems, apologize for any harm they caused, and inform the community of the steps we are taking to learn from this and prevent mistakes like such from happening again.

The quote on page 10 on the Spread section from Assistant Athletic Director Buffie Ward is misquoted and taken out of context. During the interview, Ward was responding to a question surrounding student marijuana use at Menlo. Printing the quote by itself is misleading and we apologize for the harm it caused her. We’re truly sorry for this mistake.

The statistics published in the center spread section, pages 8 and 9, were problematic. Although we explained the way they were gathered, they were presented in a way that could be misleading, despite our explanation.

The infographic on page 10 reads “The Menlo community strongly condones and punishes any use of marijuana.” It was supposed to be “The Menlo community strongly condemns and punishes any use of marijuana.”

The headline on the first page reads “Unusually high matriculation rate leads to a sparse senior class.” It was supposed to be “Unusually high attrition rate leads to a sparse senior class.”

We understand that we made mistakes with this first issue. With one of the biggest and inexperienced staffs The Coat of Arms has ever had and a tight print cycle, we were under a significant time pressure. Although this does not excuse the errors we made, we hope the Menlo community will understand and forgive what happened.

We have learned from our mistakes in the first issue, and we have created a plan to prevent similar errors in the future. We are revising our quote-checking and statistics policy, and we have led lessons in class on how to better conduct surveys. We will abide by our new stats policy when conducting them.

Regarding quote checking, The Coat of Arms does not allow sources to pre-read stories we are going to publish. However, quotes will now be checked with sources to verify accuracy in most cases. Especially if the quote is controversial, the reporter will get an editor involved. Our intention, again, is not to embarrass any sources, and double checking quotes may prevent that from unintentionally happening.

Any questions, concerns, or comments can be directed to [email protected].

—
Lauren Yang, Editor in Chief,
Amanda Crisci, Print Editor,
The Coat of Arms staff