“Every child is born with an innate
search for truth.”

Tonight I sent an email to a Marquette University Student who wrote a lead article in the Marquette Tribune that gave the impression that Governor Walker was getting great grassroots support in his raising of 12 million dollars to fight the recall effort that over a million Wisconsin residents have called for. “The story reads “77% of donations were 50 dollars or less” as the student stated in a quick response to my email. True enough, but as I pointed out, even if the average donation was $40 and they all were from in State individuals what about the 11 million plus not accounted for? It has been widely report that Governor Walker is receiving large sums of money from out of State individuals. For example, one day recently the Governor raised a million dollars from 4 individuals in Texas and Missouri. The news editor make the misrepresentation more acute by using the headline: “Walker rakes in grassroots funds.”

This is a good example of how you can state facts and information and completely misrepresent the ‘truth’. ‘Truth’ might be a matter of opinion but this game of ‘misrepresentation’ that is so prevalent in today’s political environment does not belong in good journalism. Hopefully the student and editors of the Tribune can learn something from my letter. Maybe so or maybe not.

My experience has been recently that the “search for the truth” has not been honored by media or civil discourse. In fact there is little civil discourse. When people hear something they do not want to hear they seem to react to a person or ignore the message or both. When the Marquette Administration does this to us who have stated the message that “Marquette teaches war and killing without conscience” how can we expect students to respect the search for truth?

When I was a youth minister and an educator I learned that often students learn more from the structure of an institution and what leaders do more than anything that is told them.

I admire the author of this piece for quickly responding to my letter. Although I do not agree with the justification the reporter makes for the article, I am hopeful that a response, not a reaction or ignoring my message, is a hopeful sign that the search for the truth is still alive. As Albert Einstein stated, “The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”

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