The Iowa State Daily published an article Jan. 12, 2011, about the sexual assault, misconduct and harassment policy at Iowa State, written by Kaitlin York. The story, headlined in print as “Defining dangerous deeds,” and online as “Understanding the policies for sexual assault,” was about a very serious issue on college campuses.

The story was accompanied by three sidebars, with the intention of providing more information about sexual misconduct. However, a very unfortunate error, on our part, has made one of those sidebars infamous across the Internet. The sidebar, “Who cannot give consent?” was headlined, in print, as “Who can give consent?”

The error, of course, dramatically changed the information that was presented in the sidebar. Copy errors run in publications every day, but this was more severe than the average newspaper misprint.

This was nothing more than a mistake on our part — not, as some online commenters have suggested, the product of someone with a sick sense of humor. Sexual misconduct is not a laughing matter, and, too often, careless jokes are made that can numb us and make us forget the seriousness of the matter. The Iowa State Daily does not condone sexual misconduct, and we do not take this issue lightly. We deeply regret any offense we may have caused.

Some have questioned why this error made it to print, since we discovered it before the papers were distributed. We caught the error after the papers had gone to press, and we immediately called our printer to find out what we could do. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach anyone. To not provide the ISU campus with an entire day’s newspaper because of an error would be doing our community a disservice — and, of course it would be a disservice to our advertisers, our printer and the countless others who are, in some way, invested in the work we do.

To communicate the error, we posted a notification to our Facebook page and through our Twitter account. A correction was immediately posted online, and another was published in the following day’s print edition.

Because of a graphic circulating the Internet that juxtaposes the sidebar with the the front page where the story started, someone who didn’t see a print copy of the paper might think this mistake ran on the front page. To clarify, the story was the centerpiece on the front page, and it jumped to page three. The error was on page three. Of course, the fact that the sidebar wasn’t on the front page doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have caught it — and I can assure you that this mistake will remind us how important it is to thoroughly proofread our copy before it goes to print. I can’t promise that we won’t make more mistakes in the future — but this is a student newspaper, and we’re here to learn. We have learned from this mistake, and I think it will make us better journalists.

We never expected this error to garner the kind of nationwide attention that it has — we’ve shown up on numerous blogs, the Associated Collegiate Press website and even the front page of the Huffington Post. It’s been incredibly embarrassing for us, but something good has come of it. Because of our mistake, a well-done story about a very important issue has received more publicity than it ever could have within the confines of the ISU community.

Thank you for understanding that, as college journalists, we make mistakes. We’re committed to serving Iowa State as an independent, student news organization, and we will continue to do so.

Jessie Opoien

Editor in Chief

Iowa State Daily

[email protected]

Desk phone: (515) 294-5688