As an example of fairness to all sources, the Daily tries to treat titles before names the same for everyone. Examples of titles include Dr., Sgt., President or Manager.

Sometimes we make mistakes and the titles don’t conform to our style, but we consider those errors, not norms.

So when we received a note on Sunday from Jennifer McKinney, publicist for Friday’s March for Mercy, asking us to give Chii Ughanze-Onyeagocha the title of doctor before her name, we couldn’t do it out of fairness to others. Ughanze-Onyeagocha gave the keynote address for the March for Mercy. She is one of the first students from Africa to attend Iowa State.

Fairness is the issue here. We don’t call our university’s president “Dr. Martin Jischke” because, although he has a doctoral degree, his job is not technically a medical doctor. He is president of the university.

The Associated Press Stylebook, which the Daily follows, states, “Use Dr. in first reference as a formal title before the name of an individual who holds a doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathic medicine degree: Dr. Jonas Salk.”

Out of fairness to those, such as Jischke, who aren’t called doctor when they are in the newspaper, we can’t call Ughanze-Onyeagocha a doctor simply because she requested it.

In addition, the note from McKinney said that Ughanze-Onyeagocha takes the omission of doctor as an insult to her because of her race and that she’s seen other professors referred to as doctor.

True, she may have seen other professors called doctor. However, most papers, including the Iowa State Daily, follow AP Style. Some newspapers and magazines do not follow AP Style, while some, including The New York Times, often includes courtesy titles such as Mr., Ms. and Dr.

But to say the omission of doctor before her name is an insult to her because of race is absolutely unfair to us as journalists, and the suggestion she made might be construed to be a form of racism. Using one’s race as a reason to suggest that a newspaper should use a courtesy title seems to be manipulatory.

We treated Ughanze-Onyeagocha like any other source. We treated her just like we’d treat Jischke or anyone else, regardless of color.

It is appropriate to recognize our diversity and heritages, and while we should continue to recognize when we violate rights because of race, race should not be used to further personal interests.