Darren Davis touched my arm.

There, on the field of Jack Trice Stadium, after Saturday’s thrilling game against Iowa, as he was leaving the mob of people, Darren Davis touched my arm.

I smiled at him and patted his shoulder pads along with the other jubilant students around him as he tried to get to the Jacobson Building. And he touched my arm as he passed me.

And as I was standing on the field, celebrating the 17-10 win, I thought to myself, “I love Cyclone football.”

It had been a perfect afternoon and evening, with beautiful weather, lots of friends and a nerve-racking game that came out the right way.

But then, as I stood on the field watching Darren Davis stroll past, I remembered last week’s editorial.

I wrote an editorial after the Cyclones’ first win of the season against Indiana State. I wanted to show appreciation to the players for their improvement and display pride in Cyclone athletics.

But the editorial was riddled with mistakes, including glaring spelling errors and an incorrect record for last year’s team.

The next day, when I read the editorial in print, my first impulse was to find a hole and hide there for at least a week.

Most people probably didn’t notice the mistakes. But I’m sure the folks over in the Athletic Department did, and I bet Ennis Haywood didn’t appreciate having his named spelled wrong.

I felt awful. I still feel awful.

But thankfully, Darren didn’t yell at me as he walked across the field.

I hate making mistakes. I hate it when I make them, and I hate it when my staff makes them. It’s the worst feeling to realize the next day that you’ve allowed something wrong to show up in the Daily.

Luckily, I have a talented and intelligent staff here at the Daily, and they don’t make many mistakes.

Or so I thought, until GSB senator Michel Pogge told me otherwise.

In case you were not in attendance at last Wednesday’s GSB meeting, during discussion about the new GSB/IRHA committee on the Department of Residence, Pogge informed all of us that 95 percent of what is in the Daily is wrong.

He apparently feels very strongly about this, because he repeated it about five or six times.

Yes, the Daily makes mistakes. I will be the first to admit it, because I know firsthand what kind of errors we can produce.

But none of the mistakes I’ve made have ever been intentional or malicious. And neither have the mistakes of my staff.

What Pogge didn’t do, though, is tell the Senate specifically what was wrong. He didn’t say how he had been misquoted; he didn’t say which incorrect facts were in the newspaper; he didn’t say what information we misrepresented.

He just said we were wrong. Almost all the time.

Pogge’s not alone. He seems to share his feelings about the Daily with Director of Residence Randy Alexander.

The Daily has been blamed for any and all public relations problems the Department of Residence is currently experiencing. Alexander has said the Daily is perpetuating misinformation about the department and its Master Plan.

I have no idea what misinformation we keep perpetuating. Perhaps there really aren’t fewer people working Student Security this year. Or maybe the Brown Route really wasn’t in danger of having its services slashed.

The one thing I know upset Mr. Alexander is the use of the word “cut” in a Student Security story. The first paragraph of the article said the Department of Residence had cut the number of officers patrolling this year.

That was wrong in its specific context. The department didn’t cut its numbers from 30 to seven.

But they are looking to hire fewer guards this year. Sally Deters, director of residence life, said the department was only going to hire 15-20 guards, down from the high of 30 last year.

I’m sorry for that mistake. But that mistake is the only one I’m aware of in our entire news coverage of the department.

And that isn’t enough to skew students’ understanding of the issue.

I’m sure Alexander thinks the Daily is completely out of line with covering criticism of the department and its Master Plan. (Well, at least I think I’m sure, because, like I said, he hasn’t talked to me.)

Alexander said at a recent IRHA meeting that he didn’t just dream up the Master Plan one day when he was bored. But Daily editors didn’t just dream up criticism of the Master Plan, either.

We have serious concerns, and what’s more important, many other students have serious concerns.

We are trying to represent those concerns. We are not out to get the department.

I won’t lie to you. The Daily does get things wrong.

We do stupid things, and we make plenty of mistakes that embarrass and humiliate us.

We’re not proud of them, and we do our best every day to avoid them.

But something Pogge and Randy Alexander and others discontented with the Daily need to figure out is that they need to take responsibility to point out those mistakes to me as soon as they’re printed.

When I look over the Daily every morning, I’m looking for mistakes that need to be corrected. I look for any misspellings, any incorrect information, even grammatical errors.

But I can’t possibly know if someone has been misquoted or if a piece of information is wrong unless the source tells me.

It does no good to throw out blanket statements about so much of the Daily being wrong. All that does is piss off reporters who feel like they’re doing their best with every story.

Mike Pogge is particularly frustrating in this regard. I’m not sure why or when he thinks he was misquoted, but I know he’s never told me about an occurrence. Even when his name was spelled incorrectly in an article last week, he still didn’t call to let us know.

Yes, the Daily may have misquoted Pogge. But without knowing exactly how we misquoted him, there is nothing we can do about it.

The Daily does not have a vendetta against Mike Pogge. And we don’t have a vendetta against the Department of Residence, either. We want very much to work with Pogge, Alexander and many other public figures on campus.

But we can’t do it alone.

Let me know if something is wrong in the Daily. Help me to make the Daily the best it can be.

And don’t yell at me or my colleagues if something is wrong.

Take a cue from Darren Davis.

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Sara Ziegler is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is editor in chief of the Daily.