Dear All Editors and Staff,First, I would like to apologize for the recent incident surrounding my article titled “Miss A&T showcases soulful artists.” I care deeply about The A&T Register and never had any type of motives or cruel intentions of defacing The A&T Register’s integrity. Again, I am so sorry.

On Friday, March 19, 2010, I attended Miss North Carolina A & T Eclectic event. At approximately 10 p.m.  a student and good friend of mine asked me if I could walk her to her dorm because she was scared to walk by herself. I told her repeatedly no because I had to cover the story. At any rate, I decided to walk my friend home but before I did that I looked around the room to see if there were other students that I knew personally and since I thought that the event was near the end, I decided to walk her back to her dorm.

Noted, that I decided to keep a mental note to give the students noted above a call later to include the final details for my story. Unfortunately, I made a huge mistake and demonstrated poor judgment skills by putting my job second.

In the process of writing, I put some fictional information in my story which states that

“Granted after the long and anticipated wait for Beautiful Experience, they finally took the stage with their transferrable music, genre of neo-soul, hip-hop, rock, reggae, and go-go.” “As Beautiful Experience performed songs like “Another Again,” and “I’ll Always Love You,” the audience swayed from side to side.” I did not and forgot to touch base with the student.

I have repeatedly gone over and over in my mind to why I did this and I have no answer, no great excuse, the only conclusion that I can come to is that I dropped the ball. I did not execute this story as I should have and for that I am very regretful. Honestly, I can say that I was completely wrong on providing fabricated information stating that Beautiful Experience took the stage.

I did wrong and I take full responsibility for it. I will not shy away from the consequences that will come before me. After reviewing numerous times what I did, I realize that the biggest mistake was not staying and completing the job that I was assigned to, to the best of my abilities. This has been a lesson learned and will never happen again. In addition, there is no one to blame but me; I made the decision to walk my friend home, not the other way around. Again, I sincerely apologize to The A&T Register and hope that its success continues to rise.        -Chelsea King

• Chelsea King