Editor’s Note: This article is a formal response to The Maroon’s 2/15/24 article on DEI within UChicago XC.

In January of 2024, a team member directed a Maroon reporter to me to interview me for an article he was working on about the cross country team. The reporter, Finn Hartnett, briefly explained the scope of the article, saying that it would be about the implementation of and challenges to DEI initiatives, and how these initiatives are working to increase inclusivity in team culture.

Our conversation was about half an hour long, and about a week later I received a follow-up email from Hartnett requesting confirmation that he could use my name and quotes. I confirmed my consent to be quoted, on the condition that he emphasize the positives of my experience, and not just the mistakes made. I did not hear anything else from Hartnett until the article (“DEI Programming Highlights Cultural Issues in Cross Country Teams”, 2/15/24) was published.

The cross country team, considering both men and women, has about 60 people on it. Of those 60 people, Hartnett spoke with five. One later requested to be removed from the article, meaning that four people’s quotes were held up as indicative of the entirety of the team’s experience.

Three of the four cited in the article had close ties to the person who submitted the tip. Only two agreed to be named. Hartnett did not reach out to two of the three women’s team captains, and only attempted to contact one of the men’s team captains.

This is not to say that Hartnett did not reach out to others. He did reach out to other members of the team, but never spoke with the team captains, nor the coach, nor the administrators who have assisted with the implementation of DEI initiatives – those who gave the team the grant to host more DEI programming and continue to support us as we work to better ourselves and our community.

Put simply, the scope of who he talked to is so limited that it should never have been portrayed as representative of team culture writ large. In academia, that’s referred to as “sampling bias”: when your sample is constrained in such a way that you cannot generalize the results of what you find.

Journalism is not as strict as academia, but the acknowledgement of sampling bias is still common journalistic practice. The New York Times and The Washington Post cite who has not been reached for comment and who explicitly declined to comment.

Hartnett failed to acknowledge this publicly and in writing, despite multiple team members reaching out and pointing out inaccuracies that extend past sampling bias. There is no annual O-Block run; my coach reached out to me multiple times following October 7 to apologize to me and ask what could be done to address my concerns; and I repeatedly stated to Hartnett, on paper and in conversation, that he could include what I told him about my experiences if he also included the fact that efforts had been and continue to be made to grow as a team and learn from mistakes.

The article was published on February 15, 2024. On February 16, I commented on The Maroon’s site noting the inaccuracies of the narrative, but that comment was not approved for days. On the evening of February 16, I spoke to Hartnett and explained that what he’d written was not representative of where the team culture stands, nor did he think to acknowledge the limitations of who he had been able to get in contact with.

Hartnett and his editor ultimately declined to pull the article from The Maroon’s site, instead telling me that I was welcome to submit an op-ed in response to the article if I had a problem with it.

Retroactively correcting the use of one’s name is never a comfortable position to be in. It begs the question of what I could have said differently, and if I should have said anything at all. I maintain that I was honest with Hartnett during our conversation in Fairgrounds. I also maintain that what he chose to include in the published article does not reflect the entirety of what I said.

As of my writing this, two editor’s notes have already been added to the article, and I expect more may follow. If The Maroon wishes to uphold its reputation as a reporter of UChicago news, it would do well to consistently and credibly report, or at least acknowledge when writing and interviewing methodology makes it impossible to do so. UChicago is a small campus, and treating interviewees with such lack of transparency and care is something The Maroon cannot afford to continue doing if it wishes to remain a trusted community newspaper.