Spring 2021: February Issue

Aloha mai kākou,

The beginning of 2021 has already been a wild ride. everal COVID-19 vaccines have been approved and are being administered, a domestic terrorist attack at the capitol, and the inauguration of our new president is now for the history books. I think we're all thinking the same thing at this point, which is hopefully we have seen the last of the shit shows that carried over from 2020. Here atUH Hilo, we still are awaiting what budget cuts are going to be happening moving forward next school year (teaser for page number), how UHHilo will be moving forward now that vaccines are public (teaser for page number), and what sort of exceptional UH Hilo students are hanging in there with virtual learning. We hope to spotlight our Humans of UH Hilo every month until the semester’s end, hopefully to inspire fellow students to keep trudging. (teaser for page number for Humans of UH Hilo spotlight)

There were several mistakes made in the January issue that I want to note for the record. As a student-run organization we are all learning how to be journalists, and with that sometimes comes mistakes. Unfortunately, in the January issue there were blunders made in the Chop! Chop! article. We want to apologize chiefly for misspelling Kristen Roney’s name and printing the incorrect academic title. In fact, she is the vice chancellor of Academic Affairs. The other two ‘vice chancellors’ titles were also incorrectly stated in that same article and we want to apologize to Farrah-Marie Gomes, who is the vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Kalei Rapoza, who is the interim vice chancellor for Administrative Affairs.

We also want to apologize to our sister publications Hohonu and Kanilehua. In the January Issue, we ran an article entitled “Bomb or Bust?” in which the writer failed to note all of the efforts that all the publications and the Board of Student Publications have been making to ensure we successfully produce quality work and engage with the campus that is 80 percent virtual this school year. The writer honed in on the poorly attended Meet the Publications, but failed to spotlight Kanilehua's highly successful Mark Z. Danielweski author event, their week long visual poetry event, and dozens of care packages they have sent out to UH Hilo students who are virtually learning all over the U.S. continent. Hohounu also has care packages that are in the works and a meet-the-author event featuring four different authors that Hohonu will host later this spring. The writer also failed to mention our own subscription option, all the class visits and efforts all the publications have made to spread the word about how students can be published and otherwise gain experience in putting together a student-run publication. The writer failed to consider that the student publications fee that we all pay goes in part to reimbursing our expenses associated with producing this publication, Hohonu, and Kanilehua. Finally, the author mis-spelled the names of the EICs, which are Braden Savage, of Kanilehua and Jasmine Joao, of Hohonu. We hope that you can forgive our mistakes and we are planning to work especially hard learning from these mistakes so as to not make them again. We are also going to make every effort to find stories that are truly of interest and relevant to student life. It’s been a difficult school year for us all, and trying to report the news with only 20 percent of our student body coming to campus has made it very challenging to hunt down compelling stories. For this, we ask for your help. If you know of any extraordinary students, programs, or events that are worthy of some ink or broadcast via our website and social media, we ask that you reach out to us at uhhkk@hawaii.edu.

Letter to the Editor

Aloha Kasumi,

We recently reviewed the article “Bomb or Bust?” in the January 2021 issue of Ke Kalahea. As the Kanilehua and Hohonu Editors-in-Chief, we took issue with several points in the article because we feel they misrepresent our organizations. In the title and the thesis of the article, students are asked to make a monetary judgment on the worth of the publications. This comes at a time where the university is already in a financial crisis and multiple programs are being cut or defunded. The article asks,“Have UH Hilo publications been worth student fees during the pandemic?” The article attempts to answer this question with biased and incomplete information. It highlights the achievements of Ke Kalahea while not representing the achievements of Kanilehua and Hohonu. News and Brews is touted as being a success while compared against the failure of Meet the Publications. Meet the Publications is the only event used to represent the achievements of Kanilehua and Hohonu despite numerous other events and promotional efforts. These include care packages, a week long visual poetry event, an interactive evening with Mark Z. Danielewski, and a planned event featuring four different authors. The events completed thus far have had high rates of student engagement. Coverage of these events is absent from the “Bomb or Bust?” article. In an article that is geared towards determining the worth of the publications, we feel that these efforts deserved recognition. When we were both interviewed for the quotes and information, we were told we were being interviewed for a feature article to promote Meet the Publications. Instead, we were quoted in an article discussing the objective worth of our publications.

This article does not inspire confidence that student fees are being used responsibly.

We are not asking for the issue of Ke Kalahea to be recalled; however, in the future, we would request that matters concerning the student publications be handled with more integrity. Consider that the repercussions of this article could negatively impact our publications.

As a side note, both EICs' names were misspelled in the article.

-- Jasmine Joao & Braden Savage