We come to you this week with our tails between our legs and our heads hung low. 

We’ve seen your comments, taken them into serious consideration and are ready to address the longhorn in the room. 

While we try our best to gauge the most socially relevant topics surrounding our beloved school and student body, sometimes — perhaps even more than we’d like to admit — we don’t always get it right. 

At first, the backlash was tame. Nothing more than a few Ol’ redass Ags blowing off some steam in the comments section. However, as more and more opinion pieces that were somewhat critical of Texas A&M started to be published, we noticed that a large portion of our readers were not interested in this content. 

I mean really not into this content. 

“why can’t the Bat focus on positive things like how lucy [lucky] they are to be at such as an astounding University or the delicious food available in College Station or what a privilege it is to be an American instead of patent [parent] weekend messed up my study session or A&M football sucks,” one commenter wrote in regards to an article criticizing Parent Weekend and another tackling the current state of Aggie football. “The editor allowed these articles,” they continued. Yes, you read that right — the commenter laser-focused on patriotism and Aggie Spirit is also in favor of censorship in our student papers.

Another commenter addled by the same football article stooped even lower than calling for censorship: “I’ll send a box of Kotex, stat…”

Yet another Facebook commenter went as far as calling out yours truly — about, mind you, an opinion article — saying, “Charis Adkins, I read most of these comments and essentially no one agreed with your opinion. Is EVERYone else wrong?”

As opinion writers, we admit that it is our wont to include opinions in our articles. However, we have been woefully negligent in ensuring that every single one of our lovely readers and commenters agrees with the opinions we write. What on God’s green Earth would be the point of writing about opinions that some people don’t agree with?

So, before publishing any additional pieces that may not be received particularly well, we wanted to take a step back and address these concerns. 

We’d first like to acknowledge that, as of late, our content has been rather harsh on a school that is, for the most part, clean of any dirt. In reality, we have nothing to be concerned about here at A&M. 

Our leaders have consistently shown us their morally superior decision-making process. The Corps is leading the charge against any claims of misogyny still present on campus, and our student workers are being paid fairly for the hours they regularly put in that allow campus to properly function. 

Yep, everything here is completely based, or as people over the age of 50 might say, “hunky-dory.” As Aggies, we are actually incapable of any wrongdoing, and anyone who may try to tell you otherwise is most likely sporting burnt orange. 

As university leadership and campus facilities have proven time and again, A&M is without flaw. Far be it from The Battalion, acting as a source of news and a forum for student expression, to make any unjust claims to the contrary. For this, we apologize.

We understand that Old Ags are reading The Battalion to stay in touch with the school they love so dearly. We also acknowledge it can be difficult to hear hard truths about something you love. We further recognize that plaintive complaints in the Facebook comments section of our articles — “yapping,” as the kids say — is their right as American citizens, just as it is ours to write articles.

From now on, The Battalion promises to lessen the amount of published hard truths. Out of sight, out of mind, right? 

As a testament to our commitment to do better, The Battalion will be removing all anti-A&M propaganda from both print and digital archives. This includes any and all coverage on both recently removed university or student body presidents, articles on football games in which the Aggies lost and the entire opinion section.

On an unrelated note, we’d also like to inform you that The Battalion is no longer independent, having recently been absorbed into A&M’s digitally-focused journalism department. From now on, we vow to only publish content that further amplifies the administration’s voice. While our former president may have departed, we will see that her profound strides towards free speech and democracy are upheld.  

We regrettably believed our duty as student journalists was to inform the student body of anything that could both negatively and positively affect them. We will not make this mistake again.

Charis Adkins is an English junior and opinion columnist for The Battalion.

Benjamin Barnes is a telecommunication media studies senior and opinion columnist for The Battalion.