Welcome — or welcome back — to campus. For many, this will be your first year at UTD, so you have the great pleasure of learning how to navigate this labyrinthine compound of a university. Our returning students also have the pleasure of charting new paths around campus as parking shifts around because of the various campus construction projects. Rumor has it that the esports center will be completed in early 2025, but I personally have never seen Enarc move material or erect any walls. My current theory is that large steel bars just keep magically appearing where the esports center ought to go.
Over the summer, The Mercury made several internal changes — not only to help better support our staff of writers, photographers and artists, but also to emphasize our commitment to providing accurate and interesting news coverage, alongside entertaining life & arts and opinion articles. And puzzles, of course; we maintain our commitment to providing the student body a biweekly flow of crosswords and other puzzles within our print publication.
Our website is currently undergoing a large redesign and overhaul. Besides some design changes, our mission statement and an FAQ page summarizing key portions of our policy will soon be available to our viewers. Individuals interested in specific parts of Mercury policy are encouraged to email the Editor-in-Chief at editor@utdmercury.com with their questions.
What remains the same as ever is The Mercury’s dedication to platforming Comets and their student groups. UTD is home to over 360 student organizations, which The Mercury aims to feature in each issue and highlight their big projects, movements, plans and successes. The Mercury is, however, not capable of keeping track of all student organizations simultaneously. Any student organization which would like to be featured in future issues of The Mercury should contact the Editor-in-Chief with details.
Our opinion section serves as a public forum for student voices and features various kinds of contributions. Opinions are articles written by members of The Mercury which express their own individual opinions; editorials are articles written by The Mercury’s editorial board, which express the opinion of The Mercury as an organization; opinion-editorials are courtesy submissions from members of the UTD community who are, as of publication, unaffiliated with The Mercury; and letters to the editor are brief opinion articles courtesy of UTD community members which express an opinion about a Mercury article or an action taken by The Mercury or other groups at UTD. While The Mercury does not employ viewpoint discrimination for opinion articles — that is, we do not refuse to publish your opinion if it doesn’t agree with our views — we do require that all submissions go through the same fact-checking process as any other Mercury article to ensure a rational basis within the opinion. The Mercury reserves the right to refuse the publication of or run disclaimers on any articles lacking a factual basis. Students, faculty and UTD community members interested in submitting an opinion-editorial or letter to the editor to The Mercury can contact opinioneditor@utdmercury.com.
In addition to our traditional coverage, The Mercury is focused on two major projects at the moment. The first project is digitizing The Mercury’s archives so all Comets can easily view articles published before 2010. Once completed, the digital archive will be available on our website. The opinions and ideas expressed within past Mercury publications are not reflective of the current ethical and editorial standards utilized by The Mercury. The second project is The Mercury’s coverage of the public records request it submitted during the summer as part of our investigation into UTD administration’s response to the May 1 encampment. In July, The Mercury successfully raised $3,015 to cover both the cost of the public records request and GoFundMe transaction fees, and we submitted the necessary payment to the Office of Legal Affairs. According to the university, as reported by the Dallas Observer, the cost covers the review of over 50,000 records. With full transparency, The Mercury was not expecting this many documents — the scope of our records request was relatively narrow compared to this huge amount — but The Mercury looks forward to reading them once they are ready for review. The Office of Legal Affairs has said that the records will be shared in batches, with details about the first batch planned to be sent to The Mercury on Aug. 29. The Mercury will publish updates on the status of these records as we continue to communicate with the Office of Legal Affairs. Once the records have been accessed, The Mercury will provide a summary of our findings and publish all the information we collect.
For any questions about The Mercury’s new policies, commitments and investigations, or if you are interested in joining The Mercury or learning more about what we do, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at editor@utdmercury.com.
May Temoc give you exclusively positive whooshes this semester.
—Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Editor-in-Chief
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