We are genuinely sorry to anyone we have hurt by the piece about Aileen Quinn in the 2/14 issue of The Stute. We only had positive intentions to improve the stigma around seeking help for mental illness and wanted to encourage members of the community to be more attuned to their friends and family. We can see now how the article was lacking and why it was harmful to those who knew Aileen.
Sean Quinn (Aileen’s father) had reached out to us asking to share Aileen’s story, specifically the warning signs that Stevens had missed, to help raise awareness about the climate of mental health at Stevens. After hearing what Sean had to say, we felt compelled to write a piece using the information provided to us, and dedicate the entire issue to the topic of Mental Health. It was our first mistake as writers not to consult any other sources – namely friends and professors – for their thoughts or help while deciding whether or not to write the piece.
Many of us didn’t know Aileen and were inherently limited without that perspective. We did seek help from a mental health consultant who guided us to withhold a lot of information that we originally didn’t know was irresponsible to publish. While we are a platform that speaks to the entire Stevens community, we are also a student organization and unfortunately not as professional or knowledgeable as we wish to be.
If you read the piece online or from a screenshot, the versions also may have varied. Usually, we publish all the articles automatically at midnight and then make copyediting changes later. However, for this piece, there were full sentences that were meant to be redacted and others that were missing online for a few hours. Regardless of our intention, this was careless of us and a grave mistake. We have made internal changes to make sure future articles don’t get published until they are 110% ready.
Once again, we would like to sincerely apologize for any wounds we created and thank those that came to us directly about our mistakes. Only if we are aware of our mistakes then we are able to make the changes to our organization that members of the community want to see.
If you have any concerns or questions, always feel free to reach out to the e-board, the editor-in-chief (me), or the writer, Mark.
Thank you.
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