Last week, alumnus Jim Arkedis wrote a letter to the editor of The Observer criticizing the paper for what he sees as flaunting its independent status. In his letter, published on Friday, Arkedis complained, "Recent articles harshly criticize the administration and are not relevant to the majority of the campus."

Arkedis was, of course, speaking "primarily of the `gay rights'" issue, as he put it. He said The Observer overstepped its bounds as an independent paper because these articles address an issue that affects only a small part of the Notre Dame community.

Arkedis told his readers to "do the math." However, he failed to point out that The Observer covers many issues that affect only part of the Notre Dame family.

For example, the same day that Arkedis' letter ran, there was a news story on the accounting department. Most Notre Dame students are not accounting majors, but those who are accounting majors are part of the Notre Dame community and deserve coverage in the paper.

The Observer has also done stories on students who participate in ACE or ROTC. There was a feature story on the first female member of the Irish Guard. Most Notre Dame students are unaffected by ACE, ROTC and the Irish Guard. But students in each group are part of the larger Notre Dame community, and therefore, their stories are relevant to the entire community.

Similarly, gay students and student journalists are two other groups which are part of the Notre Dame community. As a paper serving Notre Dame and Saint Mary's, The Observer should write articles on issues involving and affecting different students at the two schools.

Instead, we at The Observer should attempt to reflect the entire community. We must cover as much news as we can. A single article could never encompass all of, or even a majority of, the student body. Many articles are needed to reflect the many diverse interests on our campus.

In other words, as much as possible, we must cover all news that affects students, even if it's just a few students.

But it's not up to The Observer staff to determine what you care about and write articles only on issues that EVERY student cares about.

Our job is to report the news objectively so that, hopefully, members of the community are informed about issues affecting them and others surrounding them.

• All in the Family