A free and unrestrained press serves not only to cultivate a better-informed citizenry, but also to report on abuses of power and privilege that might otherwise go unknown and unpunished. It is for precisely this reason that politicians, businesses and other institutions of power employ public relations specialists who can promote the positive and obfuscate the negative.
But some secrets are more difficult to keep hidden than others. On Feb. 16, Mark Walker, Technology Classrooms and Labs manager at Portland State, sent an email to his employees at the PSU Office of Information Technology advising them not to talk to any media about recent layoffs, specifically mentioning the Vanguard, Willamette Week and the Mercury.
Then on Feb. 27, ASPSU Senate Pro Tempore W. Leaf Zuk sent an email out to senate members regarding turmoil within the organization. “I have also striven very hard to keep these problems from the student press, but fear it may be getting into their ears,” Zuk wrote in an email obtained by the Vanguard. “With your help we may be able to solve this situation this week and keep the whole matter out of the Vanguard.”
OIT student employees told the Vanguard off-the-record that they feared for their jobs, while some members of ASPSU said that they simply wanted the students of PSU to know how their student government was being run. The question is, why are people in positions of power at Portland State willing to go so far to keep things like this out of the press? The answer is simple: It’s because they don’t want you to know about them. And these are just the kinds of things that those in the PSU community should care most about, because if something is worth hiding from you, it may very well be because it’s to your detriment. Brave whistleblowers throughout the world place themselves at risk in order to bring to light abuses of power. As citizens, it’s up to you to decry these abuses when the free press does get a hold of them. You never know, the next whistleblower could be you.