News Editor should be ashamed for Goodman hoaxIn my two years working as an opinion columnist for The Daily Reveille, I took solace in the amount of respectable, responsible writers and columnists who worked honorably to contribute meaningful content to the discourse of student opinion at the University. That solace helped me in the face of a largely apathetic student body content with opening The Daily Reveille “just for the puzzles.” It seems my confidence in the staff upon my departure was misplaced. On April 13, a Facebook status from Reveille Senior Staff Writer Xerxes Wilson proclaimed the death of “Treme” actor and New Orleans resident John Goodman. I took this status at face value, thinking Wilson was breaking what was sure to be tragic news. I called The Daily Reveille’s newsroom to see if Wilson was there, and Adam Duvernay, news editor, “confirmed” the status, saying, “Yeah, it was on CNN this morning.” When I saw Duvernay in the Quad later in the day, he beamed at me while joyfully exclaiming, “You made my day, Freeman. My day has been made.” It seems that Duvernay was responsible for beginning what would be an awful deception. Lo and behold, this news was merely a hoax. John Goodman is not dead. This blatant slander on Facebook should not be taken lightly.  The Internet has played host to many death claims and hoaxes in the past – like rumors of Goodman’s death in 2005 exploding during Twitter’s infancy – but never before has a staffer from the Reveille taken the time to invent a reprehensible falsehood like the one perpetrated by Duvernay. The news was so shocking that I almost sent a message to Goodman’s daughter Molly, who went to my high school, to offer condolences. The Daily Reveille’s Web policy was straightforward and  responsible. It proclaimed that no Reveille reporter or columnist would endorse candidates in elections and refrain from libel or slander of any sort. The Daily Reveille had standards  — standards that were spat upon by Duvernay. As important as the Reveille is to maintaining a balanced perspective on the day’s news, so should its staffers act online as in public with honor, dignity and the kind of pride in one’s product that the most respectable journalists have all maintained.  Honor and dignity were conveniently left out of Duvernay’s repertoire. I’m aware that Duvernay is slated to graduate soon, and there are only three more weeks of print versions of the Reveille. I’m also aware that anyone can post anything they want online. But for any of those who view this status and take it at face value would surely react the same way I did. Anyone else who feels this way should leave a comment on the Reveille Web site, or follow this lead and write a Letter to the Editor.  Reveille staffers have a responsibility, in print as well as online, to report the truth with honor, integrity, and many other character-associated words that seemed to escape Adam Duvernay. This one status update has brought shame on the good name of the Daily Reveille, admittedly not much of a concern to Duvernay but well in the minds of Reveille alumni who don’t want to see workers for this historic paper running its name into the mud. Eric Freeman Jr.Former Reveille columnist, political science seniorProfessor outraged at administrative decisionWe do no great service to our students when we lead them to expect certain grades as a matter of policy.  The idea that grades aren’t necessarily earned but “distributed” according to a mathematical formula that has everything to do with statistics and nothing to do with learning obviates the goal we ought to be pursuing as an institution.  It transforms education into a mere paper chase.But the relativity of “too hard” is really not the issue in this case, nor is the distribution of grades.  The question really is whether or not a teacher has the right to run her class as she sees fit, even to the extent of making it a lot more challenging than that of other instructors of the same course.  The apparently discourteous and unprofessional manner in which Dr. Homberger was suspended from her teaching duties seems to suggest the answer is “no.”This dismaying decision will not so much serve the students’ best interest, as stated by Dean Carman, as it will further eviscerate the faculty’s already-flagging spirits.Michael F. RussoProfessor, associate librarian