Ombudsman

Due to an incident involving the validity of our naming policy in the December 2003 edition of Silver Chips, the staff has redefined the naming policy for unnamed sources.

Silver Chips uses fake names only when there are legal considerations or when they feel that revealing the source's identities would negatively affect them. Because they write for a school community of a little over 3,400 students, they have to draw the line a little more towards safety than larger institutions like The Washington Post would.

Sources who are not named present a credibility problem for many of our readers. Those readers should know that reporters must disclose the real names of all sources to the co-editors-in-chief or the advisor, who verify that those unnamed sources do in fact exist.