First, I would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by Tuesday’s column about BoBo’s Chicken, “Chicken to die for.”

I do not believe the author, Kyle West, meant to offend anyone in the OU community or beyond, but it was nonetheless insensitive.

As editor-in-chief, I want to assure anyone who is reading this column that West’s views are not those of The Daily nor shared by everyone on the staff.

As a minority journalist, it has been a personal goal of mine to help break down unfair stereotypes. I am disappointed to say Tuesday’s column embraced negative stereotypes — exactly the opposite of what journalists should strive to accomplish. As a result of this step back, the column has been removed from OUDaily.com.

For those of you still asking yourself how this article was ever allowed to be published, I will try to answer that as best as possible.

Columns are not articles. They are personal attempts to describe how one individual feels about a certain issue. Regardless, we edit columns and try to look for problems and offensive issues like the ones brought up in Tuesday’s column.

I’m afraid there is no excuse for the column slipping through the cracks, but that is essentially what happened. The Life & Arts editor should not have overlooked the potentially offensive subtext, but again, that’s what happened.

The Daily is a department of Student Media, a division of Student Affairs, and aims to give OU students hands-on and practical experience in as many mediums as possible.

With this being said, I hope everyone realizes we are all students and are all still learning.

And I can assure you we have learned from this mistake, like others, and have taken it to heart. We will try our hardest, as we always do, to avoid making any mistakes we have in the past.

I can only hope you, the OU community, will trust us on this promise.

Jamie Hughes is editor-in-chief of The Oklahoma Daily and a journalism junior.