Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Troy McCullough, Tim Davis, Jennifer Holland, Kathleen Carlson and Jenny Hykes.

There seems to be a lot of confusion lately about why we do what we do. “Your opinion page is terribly biased,” wrote one student recently.

“Do you think it’s fair and objective to run news and opinions side by side?” wrote another student.

Many others have recently expressed concerns about the Daily endorsing certain groups or ideas through editorials or opinion columns.When the public is unaware of the policies of the newspaper, confusion and anger always seem to surface. This is not the public’s fault. It is our job to explain ourselves to you.

Think of the newspaper as a public forum where current events and ideas are discussed. Each issue of the Daily provides Iowa State with news on sports, happenings in the community and arts and entertainment.

From the front page to the currents pages to the sports pages, the news articles that you read should be as unbiased as possible. This means that they should present all sides of the issue they are covering.

The exception comes on the opinion page. The opinion page runs on page four every day. This is the place where five members of the newspaper’s staff debate and write editorials every day. It is also the place where the newspaper’s opinion columnists express their views. Readers’ opinions are also printed in the form of letters to the editor and guest columns.

The opinion page is just what it claims to be: a forum to express fact-based opinions and views on a variety of subjects. If a news story about a Government of the Student Body bill appears on the front page, it should be objective and present all sides of the issue surrounding that bill.

If an editorial denouncing the bill appears on the opinion page, it doesn’t mean the newspaper is biased. It means the newspaper’s opinion page is doing its job by forming an opinion on a current issue affecting the campus.

But if the news story would happen to have those same opinions interjected into it, then we have a problem.

In short, Daily readers should be able to find out about all sides to current issues on the newspaper’s news pages. And consequently, readers should be able to find fact-based opinions on some of these same subjects on the opinion page.

Sometimes readers agree with the opinions. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the news staff agrees with the opinions. Sometimes they don’t. The point being that the news is the news, and the opinion page is the opinion page.

Allowing all this to be published is consistent with the idea of having a forum to voice a wide range of news and opinions to the Iowa State community. Though technically news and opinions run side by side in the paper, if we do our job correctly, the two should not mix.