The Southerner does not represent the complex and opposing views that South’s students have. The Southerner’s rhetoric only displays a single point of view, and more often than not talks down to it’s audience patronizingly.

It is often observed that the Southerner is just ten pages of the same opinions agreeing with each other. Eleven of the fourteen staff members for the Southerner are women. Its good to have a place for women to voice their opinions and write, but the newspaper for the entire school isn’t the place. South High’s students aren’t 78% women. The Southerner shows only a sliver of reality. The scary thing about that is that it is read by most South students, and it is the loudest voice for change here.

There are plenty of defenders of the Southerner’s monolithicity. They say that its okay to only represent one opinion because they’re good opinions. The Southerner is a powerful force, and has a huge readership. This makes it a platform that can easily change people’s views, and it always changes them for the better. The Southerner has always been dedicated to disassembling homophobia and racism. Even it’s movie reviews are judged purely on how much they advance social justice. The Southerner promotes the betterment of our school, but a single story is always dangerous.

Let’s use the April issue as an example. The focal article was explaining that we must respect the gender-neutral bathroom. The article also cleared up many misconceptions about non-binary people. It somehow was able to steer clear of any controversy. It dictated reality, but didn’t acknowledge anything outside of fact. The article didn’t acknowledge any extreme views or fix any pertinent problems. Having one gender-neutral bathroom may not be the best option, and the Southerner portrays it as the only one.

We could convert every bathroom to a gender-neutral one and fully integrate South High. On the other side of the spectrum we dedicate one or two bathrooms to transgender or non-binary students, which would stop people from taking advantage of a gender-neutral bathroom but also give a ¨separate but equal” vibe to it. The solution we got (having a single gender-neutral bathroom) was a good one, but we can’t always trust that it will be.