Campus Media Abuse
Sat Apr 26, 2008 at 07:24:57 AM PDT
Going through the posts over at feministing.com I was surprised to read about some seriously ill advised, flat out racist opinions pieces in college campuses. This one in particular, about "Asians" was shocking in its vitriol.
Students have claimed this to be "satire." At the very least, they should retroactively fail whatever literary classes they've taken for their abuse of the word, and sit with Alanis Morissette in a class on "proper use of literary terms, satire, irony, etc."
There are many things college is supposed to be- a place to learn academics, yes, but it's also a safe place to test limits, to protest, to drink too much, to make mistakes. But how far should students test those limits? Often we look to colleges to create the most passionate, activist types around us, and I think it's shocking when something like this- which, let's be frank, is average in its offensiveness when you compare it to the general populous- comes out of a college. We expect better. And yet you will not find me on the side of colleges acting in loco parentis. I wonder what the consequences for something like this should be? In "real life" you'd get fired... or maybe sued by China. I have a story after the jump about my own experience with campus media. It's isn't entirely pertinent to post, but the link opened old wounds and I felt the urge to purge.
I was the Co-Editor in Chief of my Very Conservative Religious College's newspaper, The Torch, for two years. My last year, which was incidentally my senior year, ended badly. The conservative bent of our college had taken a pretty nasty turn in the four years that I was there- the new president was digging his heels in deep and "administration-free media" was on his hit list. Campus media, in "my day," wasn't administration regulated. Funds came from the allocations by the student senate (I made $.11 an hour) and were therefore pretty well out of the failing communications department's hands. Our advisor was a very young, lecherous-at-best law student who taught a few classes here and there for drinking money. There were three efforts made in the two years I was in charge to make working on the campus media equivalent to "class credit, " which sounds fine and good until you realize it means a professor on staff, "grading" (approving) content. Considering our most popular run was a three-week coverage dedicated to "Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll on Campus," we were less than thrilled by the idea of the constant monitoring. We politely declined all "reasonable offers" and went on our way.
Every year, the newspaper would do a parody called the Scorch on April 1st, but that year, some seriously newsworthy stuff was going down (what, I couldn't tell you today) and my co-editor and I decided to postpone the publication until "Spring Week," a week filled with drunken fraternity parties, alumni visits and overall springtime shenanigans. Co-Editor and I had a pretty wicked awesome staff, some real intellectuals with a biting sense of humor. When it came to the Scorch, we left a few volunteers in charge and went about our Incredibly Important News jobs. We gave the copy a once over, considered it funny if not slightly off color, but didn't think much of it.
Disaster followed. "Got Milk?" ads were extremely popular then- picture the milk mustache on popular actresses but instead, the headline instead reads "Got Boyfriend?" Yeeeahh... not our finest hour, but in comparison to the 70s and 80s publications, we were downright tame. It was an opening, though- a "gotcha" moment on the part of the faculty in the communications department to prove we were not responsible enough to take care of things ourselves. Instead of attending the Senior Parties, I was writing my case for Judicial Board. I was told I could be denied my diploma if I didn't attend. I worried furiously over my co-editor, who was a year younger and had already been named Editor in Chief for the following year. They offered us an opportunity to get "off the hook" if we just told them who wrote the stories. My Dean of 4 years, the Communications Director, was the faculty representative against us. We had no such representative.
After 3 days of bullshit we were found guilty of breaking a university rule so vague in it defies reason- essentially, we had behaved in an "Un-Christian like Manner" by not telling them who had published the pieces. My Co-Editor was fired from the next year. I had 3 weeks until I wouldn't set foot on that campus for a very long time- until my sorority desperately needed an adviser. As much as I loved college for 90% of it, I still can't go back there and feel comfortable. I didn't speak to my co-editor, one of my closest friends, for nearly a year until another mutual friend brought us together and said look, you think she doesn't want to hear from you, she thinks the same thing, talk already! And we did- we purged a lot of anger and on my end, guilt at leaving her behind to deal with the mess.
Oddly enough, 2 years later (after my co-editor had graduated) the Judicial Board of the campus overturned the ruling, stating it set a bad precedent. I was notified by the local town newspaper who wanted a statement (incidentally, the journalist? A friend who worked for me at the school). It didn't matter- the newspaper staff now registers as a class, editors are chosen by the lovely communications professor who had stood against us and as a recipient of a "free subscription for life" I can tell you, there has not been an article about sex or drugs on campus since.
