On Jan. 24, The Statesman published a story titled “Green Dot bystander intervention training tackles violence,” and on Jan. 25, the story was published in The Statesman’s print edition. The story has since been retracted.

Smita Majumdar Das, the main source quoted in the story, emailed The Statesman to say that the author had not interviewed her and that there were inaccuracies in the story. Specifically, she said she had not met with the founder and executive director of the Green Dot bystander intervention program, Dorothy Edwards, in person and that Edwards has never come to the Stony Brook campus.

Upon further investigation, it was found that the author had taken the quotes from a story she had previously written about a similar topic. She had not communicated this information to The Statesman editors before she submitted the story. The Statesman expects its writers to interview sources for each individual story that they write for The Statesman and to be transparent with the people they interview about why they’re being interviewed and where the story will be published.

The Statesman takes stories about interpersonal violence and our publication’s integrity very seriously. We apologize to Majumdar Das and anyone who was affected by these inaccuracies.