The Register Star's story about faculty overtime known as overload pay was strictly the facts, expressed without opinion and making sure to let both sides explain their positions. Those who say otherwise are talkin' smack.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts." — Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ambassador, U.S. senator, D-New York.

"What we've got here is failure to communicate." — The Captain (Strother Martin), "Cool Hand Luke."

When I started working at the Register Star on Nov. 5, 1984, most people seemed to understand the media's role in society, and they knew the differences among business relationships, news stories, opinion columns and editorials.

I no longer think that's true, even for many highly educated people. The latest example concerns the front-page story in Sunday's newspaper and on rrstar.com about how some Rock Valley College professors are able to use the faculty union contract to "spike their base salary by 60 percent or more."

This "overload pay" is when a professor "teaches more than the equivalent of five, three-credit classes a week, the minimum instructional load required by the contract," the story by Isaac Guerrero said.

Overload pay last year was $2.2 million out of $15 million the college paid out in faculty compensation, the story said. For instance, faculty union president and economics professor Michael Youngblood made a base salary of $92,043, and was able to increase that to $134,541 by teaching more class sections.

The college wants to reduce overload pay by cutting the number of times classes are offered.

I won't say I was surprised by some of the comments when I reposted Guerrero's story on my Facebook page. But one comment deserves a response because the commenter confused fact-based news with opinion and tossed out phrases like conflict-of-interest and scandal.

David F. Black's comment said the story was a "hatchet job. Again the Register Star is acting as the mouthpiece of the RVC administration without the paper disclosing its financial ties to the college. How is offering more courses taught by experienced faculty some sort of scandal?"

I asked on Facebook what was factually wrong with the story. Someone named Rylee Antczak said "not wrong but biased." Black added, "Exactly. And not disclosing the paper's financial ties to the college remains an ethical problem."

So, the story was factual but biased? Impossible. It was not biased. And it didn't talk about scandal.

Here's why we told the story. RVC is a large, tax-supported institution that is undergoing severe financial strains because the state of Illinois isn't paying it share of the cost. Since 2015 Illinois has shorted RVC more than $16 million. Local property tax revenue declined from $18.5 million in 2007 to $14.4 million in 2015. And student enrollment has declined since 2010. So, cuts have had to be made, some of them painful.

RVC isn't the exception. Similar stories are being told at community colleges and state universities across Illinois.

We think the owner/taxpayers of RVC need to know the intricacies of how the college is coping with hardship.

As far as not disclosing the newspaper's physical connection to RVC, I invite our critics to come downtown and gaze at the prominent "Rock Valley College" sign on the News Tower. They can also check out the prominent news coverage we've given to the downtown campus that set up shop on our second floor.

Let's talk about ethics. We have thousands of relationships with businesses and institutions of all kinds. In all the years I've been on the Editorial Board and writing columns, no publisher or advertising director has ever told the board or me what editorial position to take or what candidates to endorse based on any business arrangements. It just doesn't happen. 

American newspapers have unwritten walls of separation between the business end of the operation and the editorial and news departments. Do some advertisers scream at our ad sales people over stories, editorials or columns they don't like? I'm sure they do sometimes, but the sales people have to grumble about that in their own department. We never hear about it.

There's also a wall between the Editorial Board and the news reporting. I write a column where I express my opinion based on facts, a unique niche, but that, too, is a long-established newspaper tradition.

The Editorial Board has supported diversification of RVC's course offerings and locations for two decades, long before RVC chose to begin a downtown campus, originally in Stewart Square.

We endorsed the candidates we did for RVC Board of Trustees in Tuesday's election because we believe they best represent goals for RVC's future that we've expressed for many years. Period.

Who are they? Marlana Dokken, Jennifer Ray and Neeley Erickson.
