The FactMeter: "Senate Branding" A Bit of A Stretch

The FactMeter is a new feature on The Quad where we analyze articles, particularly dealing with student government, for accuracy.  We assign each claim we study one of three designations: "True," "Somewhat Accurate" or "Not All That True," and at the very bottom of posts, we sometimes write a takeaway -- the lesson that the analysis presents.

The Claim: Does the TCU Senate want to re-name Fall Ball as "Senate Fall Ball," and force student groups to display a Senate logo on advertising, as the Daily's coverage today implies?

The Verdict: Somewhat Accurate. The ideas are out there, but there is no Senate consensus on them.

The Story:

The Daily published an article today about how the TCU Senate wants to raise its profile on campus, and on a couple of ideas to do so that some members have floated.  But the Daily's reporting and editorializing seemed to make it more of "the Senate plans to do X" rather than "individuals within Senate have brought up a few ideas."

The article does this in its title, "Senate looks to put its stamp on events" -- which implies that Senate intends to do so, when it is unclear whether senators will actually support the ideas.

It also does so in paragraph 2, saying, "senators are hoping to incorporate the word 'Senate' into the title of major university events that the body sponsors exclusively, such as Fall Ball and the Nighttime Quad Reception..."

A more accurate description is in paragraph 14, where having groups display a Senate logo under certain circumstances is described as "[o]ne idea within the committee."

The Daily's editorial uses less nuance, with lines like "So they [members of the outreach committee] are proposing to attach the Senate's name to events like Fall Ball and the Nighttime Quad Reception..." and "What's more, the Senate proposes to create an emblem that it can add to student organizations' materials."

The second quote is inaccurate because the Senate itself hasn't proposed anything.  The first quote is a bit more accurate, because it assigns the idea to the outreach committee as opposed to the Senate.  But neither quote makes clear that the ideas are in their infancy, and there is no evidence to suggest a Senate consensus around them.

(As a side note, the Daily's editorial page asks: "Is it really acceptable to re-appropriate our campus traditions for the purpose of advertising our student government?"  Keep in mind that without Senate's planning, it is likely that neither Fall Ball nor the Nighttime Quad Reception would exist as campus traditions.)

Overall, the editorial makes good points.  There are good reasons both for and against the branding ideas that have been floated in Senate, and the arguments made in the editorial will be beneficial to the outreach committee as it considers branding ideas.  And much of the news article is accurate.  But the article and the editorial occasionally conflate a Senate idea with a senator's idea -- and this is where inaccuracy starts to creep in.

The Takeaway: It is best to attribute an idea to Senate only when Senate has voted in favor of an idea, and to attribute it to a committee only when the committee has voted in favor.  Until then, it's just "a few senators" or "some members of Senate."