Yes, standards still matter.

A recent opinion piece published in The Mercury continues a conversation between our two publications that we initiated in our November 2025 editorial, “Meet the Mercury — and its gilded cage.” We’d like to keep that open line of communication between our editorial teams going by addressing how The Mercury appears to view The Retrograde and our staff.

The piece, titled “Standards still matter,” first states that no member of The Retrograde has reached out to The Mercury’s staff to request comment on, verify or contextualize “claims” we made about The Mercury in our November editorial, and that we “levied sweeping accusations without engaging in the most basic reporting practices.” It saddens us that this is the message Mercury staff took away from our editorial, as though the editorial is condemning incoming Mercury staff as incompetent, bad at journalism or undeserving of support.

Rather, the editorial was written as an act of student solidarity. It acknowledges the incoming staff will bring excitement and passion into their new occupations, but that no matter how skilled or thorough they are, the circumstances they are inheriting will cripple their ability to report well. We wrote that piece to clearly illustrate to our student body that joining The Mercury will not allow one to succeed at criticizing the university, investigating its flaws or reporting difficult truths. 

We know this because we lived it. We were crushed to death by the administrative shackles that still bind The Mercury to this day when our reporting became too biting. If Mercury staff find our lived experiences and prediction of the future “delegitimizing,” we encourage them to reflect on why they aren’t angling to prove us wrong — by demonstrating that challenging journalism can come out of a university-controlled  publication — but instead painting us as schoolyard bullies.

At the time of the editorial’s publishing, The Mercury had just published its first post-revival issue. There was nothing for us to reach out about, even if the scope of the editorial warranted reaching out necessary — which it didn’t. And yet we reached out anyway. The Retrograde’s leadership met with the Editor-in-Chief of The Mercury at the start of fall semester, spoke to her team at Media Fest and read the only meeting minutes available discussing The Mercury’s operations and bylaws. In total, we published 68 pages of emails, meeting minutes and bylaws, all of which supported our concerns around exploitable policy that could be weaponized against Mercury staff and their reporting.

Since that editorial’s publication, The Retrograde has engaged in numerous conversations with current and former Mercury staff and discovered that, much like we predicted, content criticizing school administration is being censored by an advisor that somehow has the time to sit in on all pitch meetings, but not the time to train her staff. Thankfully, we remain on campus to tell the stories The Mercury isn’t.

We have never publicly commented on, let alone attacked or criticized, the actual reporting The Mercury publishes. We understand Mercury staff are brand-new journalists and are still learning the ropes, and we have no interest in being needlessly mean by highlighting any issues in their articles. Our criticism isn’t about the students or their work, but the structures they are forced to operate under.

The opinion piece also asserts we are competing publications. How disheartening! Plenty of universities boast multiple newspapers on campus, and each one has its own content niche, target audience, political slant, reporting style and so forth. The Retrograde views The Mercury quite warmly for lifting the burden of covering every single topic on campus off our shoulders. We know now that if we can’t cover an event or topic, The Mercury has got our back and can cover it instead. This way, we can divide and conquer, and focus on what each of our publications does best.

But while The Retrograde is happy to do all the hard-hitting investigative journalism for now, that doesn’t mean The Mercury is excused from taking a critical eye to administration. Even if its content focuses on fluffier, positive stories, how are its readers meant to trust a word they see if there’s a possibility some university official rewrote or restrained it to make UTD look better? When prior review is the norm, that possibility becomes a likelihood and, eventually, a guarantee. Everything reported, from calls made in a sports match to what students think about a new campus project, cannot be trusted in the absence of editorial freedom. As an editorial team with over a decade of combined experience, dozens of awards and conferences under our belt and home of the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association’s current president, ask us how we know.

“Standards still matter” brings up organizational competitiveness in the context of the Committee on Student Media. The opinion piece argues that since Retrograde staff are some of the students appointed to the committee, which oversees the operations of The Mercury and other Student Media outlets, a conflict of interest arises. Upon hearing this, our editorial team stared at each other’s faces in confusion.

The first student appointed to COSM was not a member of Retrograde staff. Neither was the second, third, fourth or fifth. 

Students dropped off the committee like flies because of the extreme emotional toll the committee meetings had. Each meeting was hostile to students, refused to address legitimate problems in how Student Media operated and brashly shut down valid critiques. It wasn’t until after this unprecedented level of turnover that Student Government felt the need to nominate the fired former Editor-in-Chief of The Mercury and current EIC of The Retrograde to the committee. 

This student was appointed specifically for their journalism experience and the support they received from thousands of students, faculty, alumni and campus organizations over their unfair termination, which had caused The Mercury to collapse and necessitated COSM forming to begin with. This same editor was on the ad-hoc committee that wrote the new policy that allows COSM to exist. This student understands better than anyone exactly why The Mercury collapsed, and has been working to remedy the very bylaws that led to the collapse so the revived Mercury will not suffer the same fate. The second Retrograde staffer appointed by COSM, our Opinion Editor, attends each COSM meeting with the same goal.

The Retrograde does not see an issue with seasoned student journalists, who have weathered storms caused by administrators restricting student publications’ freedoms, trying to help other student journalists facing similar turbulence. It is also one of our founding principles that if no one else will do the difficult but right thing — whether that be exposing the truth or participating in a hostile committee — then we will.

We do not act out of malice or wish to overshadow The Mercury. We do not see The Mercury as a competitor, but as fellow students in the shackles we only recently shook off. Like a free dog tugging on another’s chain, we are trying to help.

We are also sorry to hear Mercury staff feel unsafe in the Student Media office. Unfortunately, we aren’t surprised either. Students complaining about verbal harassment from administrators and “hellish” conditions has been common across the dozens of students who have left Student Media this year. The Retrograde’s staff experienced much of the same in that office — whether as former Mercury staff or as part of other StuMe outlets — including sexual harassment and having police called on us by Student Media administrators. If there is anything we can do to help the situation, we encourage staff to reach out to us. Our team has the benefit of not being in that office anymore, so we have more bandwidth to help. 

We’re glad to hear The Mercury say it isn’t resistant to criticism, so we hope its staff takes this editorial to heart. To its staff: we encourage you to talk to journalism experts like those of the Society of Professional Journalists or Student Press Law Center, and to speak up during COSM meetings to demand editorial freedom and push for bylaws that actually protect you. We encourage you to reach out to us if you do not understand why we think you are suffering suppression and censorship. 

A sentiment we have heard frequently from Mercury staff is, “We don’t know why everyone dislikes us, none of us were even here when the drama happened.” As your creaky-kneed elder siblings, we want you to understand that it isn’t about you, personally. It is about the active strike you broke, and the long history of Comets fighting for our free speech that your choice to join The Mercury necessarily opposes. The campus sees you as students choosing money and resume line items over the First Amendment, because you could have easily joined The Retrograde and our robust volunteer journalism network if you loved journalism, but instead you chose to break the strike. 

We don’t hate you for that. We’re happy you exist, that you’re driving interest in student press, that you’re covering stories to lighten our load. 

We wish you’d try to take the fangs out of your own neck, is all.