When Grant Denton talks about accountability in his recent This Is Reno opinion, it’s hard not to laugh — not because accountability isn’t important, but because the people who have been asking Denton for accountability since May 2024 know how little of it they’ve received.

Those were the women who spoke out publicly about concerns surrounding the Karma Box Project Executive Director. Since then, many say they have been dismissed, ignored, or pushed aside by the very community leaders who claim transparency and compassion as guiding principles.

Calling a statement like “accountability matters” an oxymoron depends less on the phrase itself and more on the speaker’s perceived credibility.

The words “accountability” and “matters” are not opposites, so linguistically it is not an oxymoron. An oxymoron is something like “deafening silence” or “jumbo shrimp,” where the terms directly contradict each other.