Update: Some students at CCSU have started their own blog–Take Back the Recorder— in opposition to the paper’s editorial staff. Go show them your support.
Last February we heard the story of a college newspaper in Connecticut that printed an article saying “rape is a magical experience” and “rape only hurts if you fight back.” The author claims he was trying to satirize rape, which he clearly did not achieve. ((If you want to see real rape satire, go here to Marcella’s site.)) Well it looks like this bunch is at it again and more emboldened than ever since they managed to survive their last go round. This time, among other offensive diatribes, the Central Connecticut State University newspaper has published a cartoon about urinating on a 14 year old Latina, who is locked in a closet. ((The writers and editors clearly haven’t learned their lesson. While scrolling through the electronic copy of the paper I found an article written by Justin Kloczko. The primary purpose of the article is to taunt a local reporter who is leaving the New Britain Herald to write for the Hartford Business Journal. The taunts and insults are directed at this reporter because he was one of the people who brought the February rape article to light. The article appears next to a picture that says “Crotch Shots, Nipple Slips, Cellulite Legs! The Recorder is not looking for the above, but is looking for dedicated photographers to cover local and campus events. Contact us at ccsurecorder@gmail.com and make us forget that Britney picture.” ))
I found out about this debacle from a comment left in the thread on the West Virginia rape and torture case over at Feministing. A commenter named prof/activist provided a link to the PDF copy of the paper. The offending cartoon can be found in its original context if you scroll to page 16, the final page of the PDF file. The cartoon consists of two figures one triangular and the other square. The triangle says that his urine smells like honey after he eats certain cereals, and the square asks if it tastes like urine. Then the triangle says, he doesn’t know he’ll have to ask the Latina girl tied up in the closet. Then, it jumps to the final frame where the square says, “Tell Juanita I said Hola.” The cartoon also has a sentence printed under it that says, “The Recorder Does Not Support the Kidnapping of (and Subsequent Urinating on) Children of Any Age.” I was going to repost the cartoon here, but it’s not worth the bandwidth. You can open the PDF file above to read it.
Students and faculty members, disgusted by the paper’s racist and sexist reputation, protested the cartoon on Friday. The story was covered in the local paper and it received national attention. Here’s a quote from the AP article in the New York Times:
The university’s president vowed on Friday to cut off advertising in the paper, and its critics have planned a protest on Monday on campus to push for reforms, including the ouster of the paper’s editor, Mark Rowan.
“We believe the climate here at Central is one that fosters this kind of behavior,” said Francisco Donis, a psychology professor and president of the university’s Latin American Association, “so we want more systematic changes to create a welcoming environment for everyone to feel safe and secure.”
About 5 percent of the 9,600 undergraduates are Hispanic, according to university figures. The campus is in New Britain, a racially diverse city of 71,000 about 12 miles southwest of Hartford.
Mr. Rowan, 21, was the editor in February, when the newspaper was criticized for publishing a satirical opinion piece titled “Rape Only Hurts if You Fight It.” The satire called sexual assault a “magical experience” that benefits “ugly women.”
The author of the article lost his position at the paper and apologized, but Mr. Rowan was allowed to retain his post.
The university created a task force that recommended providing more training for its student journalists, buying libel insurance and creating a student-run alternative paper or Web site.
Mr. Rowan, who is set to graduate in December, said lingering anger over that controversy was adding to outrage over the cartoon. He said he did not know if he would be asked to resign.
Rowan and his cronies have caused enough trouble for the University, ushering the school into the national spotlight on two separate occasions. It seems clear that Rowan lacks the ability to judge the quality and appropriateness of the paper’s content. Both pieces in question were not only offensive, but they also were of poor quality. Petroski’s rape article didn’t succeed at being satire, and this cartoon didn’t succeed at being funny. In fact, only a person like Ted Bundy would find either of these articles amusing, which makes me wonder if there are some sociopaths running this paper.
Mr. Rowan has shown poor judgment, and has allowed the student newspaper become a bottom feeder with little journalistic integrity. Right now Mr. Rowan holds two journalism related positions. He’s an editor of the CCSU student paper, and he has an internship with the Hartford Advocate, but at the rate he’s going he may never have another position in journalism. How is he going to explain these gaffes to potential employers? Who would want to hire someone, who routinely brings negative attention to their publication? He hasn’t learned his lesson, and that’s going to come back to haunt him in the future. A good editor thinks about getting the story, and getting quality material, not just pushing his political agenda and publishing anything that comes across the desk.
I know the retorts that the student editors will have–We have free speech. We didn’t mean to offend. Lighten up, it’s just a cartoon. You’re being too sensitive. I hear these arguments every time someone engages in offensive behavior like this. Rather than taking responsibility, they try to deflect the criticism by condemning the condemners. At this point, it’s pretty clear, that the University needs to step in and revamp the paper. If the student editors are unwilling to do this themselves, it is incumbent upon the University administration and the majority of students to oust the paper’s editors. This surely doesn’t represent the school, its administrators, and the vast majority of its students.
I think this probably happens quite a bit and maybe I’m cynical but I think it’s a manifestation of larger problems rather than what some people tend to call(as they do with some hate crimes) aberrations. You do have to balance free press rights with responsible and ethical journalism including on college and university campuses but in this case as with many others, for different reasons, racism, sexism and homophobia are given the forum, reflecting both the people on the newspaper staff and sometimes the culture of the audience as well.
After all, what was happening and what was the response with college administrators when this problem wasn’t getting national attention or was building to this point over a period of time? Because often that’s what happens.
And the truth is, many colleges and universities either have newspapers without journalism programs or if they have journalism programs, they are completely separate. So many of these students aren’t trained in ethics, news gathering, interviewing, proofing, fact checking and so forth. Are there policies for op-ed pieces provided? I would guess not.
The local state university in my city had the same thing happen. Cartoons that were racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic. Opinion pieces were someone spent some time in an Ethnic Studies Class, immediately went into a “What about White people” mantra, was called on it by other students, called the teacher a name, fled the class in a huff then ran to a computer to write an “expose” on ethnic studies, slandering its department chair.
The newspaper’s staff which was all White in this case except for a Black male student who was sports editor shrugged their shoulders at a meeting, saying they had no idea what’s going on. Then they asked the Black male student to speak for them after saying that because they had a Black student on the staff, they couldn’t be racist and so forth.
The campus was fairly racially diverse, the most in the state’s system but that was largely due to anti-affirmative legislation passed by the state in the mid-1990s.
Protests, local attention and some of the same reforms that were mandated in this case followed. Alternate papers were created and at one point, a decision was made to redistribute student funds for social activities to different newspapers rather than just this one, because so many students refused to pay fees if only the newspaper was getting them.
But these examples may be a more extreme example of what so-called mainstream newspapers do already. Which is why there is such a rich history of community newspapers, alternative presses and such.
Well, so much for the “it’s just those crazy rural southern hillbillies who are racist” defense.
Unfortunately, for individuals who like to think their regions do not have these problems, they do. Stop pointing fingers by saying it’s only this region or that one and look closer to home. Look at your own backyard. Not that you can’t criticize or should not criticize what’s going on in other places, but often there’s this smugness that racism, sexism and so forth are over there, not here where we are so much more enlightened.
The stereotyping of people as backwards, inbred hillbillies is uncalled for.
Racism, sexism, homophobia and so forth live on college and university campuses as does larger society. This was one form of expression for them. Rest assured, it’s far from the only one.
Things like this lead me to believe that one of the most valuable aspects of the First Amendment is that it gives us an avenue to discover who the assholes are.
An interesting new phenomena is starting to crop up. I found out about it in the context of my activites as an Educational Counselor for MIT. Apparently a couple of EC’s were doing searches on their interviewees to see what they might have had to say on their MySpace pages or elsewhere, and factoring that into their evaluations. There was a healthy debate on whether or not this was a legitimate thing to do. The MIT admissions office has told us not to do it.
Now for the record, I haven’t, I don’t, and I have no intention of starting. But I wonder if employers will start doing that. If so, these guys may find this has repercussions they hadn’t dreamed of. Stuff you could get away with in school back in my day (or even as more recently as 5 or 10 years ago) can haunt you forever now.
You know, I used to think it had repercussions, but am not so sure. I can think of one circumstance where I was told that racist language on a site was going to be taken seriously and six months down the line, “seriously” was honoring the individual for his job performance. And it’s possible he wasn’t the only one treated in that matter. So when individuals tell me that “assholes” will be dealt with, I don’t believe them anymore.
It depends again on how those who supervise “assholes” handle the situation. Often, their failure to do so tells you that it’s a system in place, rather than “assholes” that needs reform.
One thing that distinguishes the cartoon from the alleged “satire” is that there is no possible way to claim that this is in any way political, or art, or has social value. The cartoon depicts the sexual degradation of a 14 year old. I call that child porn. The title, Polydongs (below which in small print it says True of Idiots, or something (it was hard to read)) is translated “many dicks” and sounds like gang rape to me. Some people tried to say this was commentary on R Kelly, but there’s no reference to the rapper in the cartoon. Rowan is no “kid.” He’s an adult. Not a very mature or intelligent one. I wonder if he’s ever known someone who suffered this in real life. Maybe he should meet the W.Va. victim and see if then thinks his cartoon is funny. The scary thing…he still might.
employers already have started doing that!
” But I wonder if employers will start doing that. ”
Employers already google stalk prospective employees.
And this dude Rowan is screwed because this is not just related to his personal life, but directly related to job performance or potential career “issues.” And honestly, if I was an employer, especially in the area of journalism, I would think this guy is a liability to my magazine/newspaper/radio station/etc. because he lacks better judgment.
And it’s not just a one time occurrence, as some people who read the PDF file have noted this single issue of the paper has several comments or articles that are in poor taste or reflective of bias.
I don’t even think faux news would hire this guy :)
I wrote about this yesterday at My Left Nutmeg:
http://www.myleftnutmeg.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8042
What I just noticed from reading the electronic version of the paper that you linked to is that John Petroski, who wrote the “Rape Only Hurts When YOu Fight It” article, who was supposedly fired from the paper, is actually the cartoonist for a different cartoon in the paper. (In this edition, it was actually an inoffensive one.) So, apparently, Petroski wasn’t “fired”…just “redeployed”.
Awful.
You do have to balance free press rights with responsible and ethical journalism including on college and university campuses but in this case as with many others, for different reasons, racism, sexism and homophobia are given the forum, reflecting both the people on the newspaper staff and sometimes the culture of the audience as well.
The right to a free press means that the government cannot prevent you from publishing whatever you please, regardless of whether it’s offensive, racist, etc. It does not mean that anyone who owns a press (including a government) has to print whatever the hell someone feels like submitting. I think it would be a fair use of free speech to ask, in person and in print, just what the hell these people were thinking printing something like that?
RonF, You don’t have a right to print child pornography?
Child pornography is a legally interesting area of First Amendment law, but it has nothing to do with this case; depicting talking about peeing on kidnapped teenagers is disgusting but hardly pornographic. I can’t conceive of a law which would prevent the publication of something like this cartoon without also preventing the publication of many, many, many other things.
This is an area where informal social pressure has to take the place of a censoring government, if we want to avoid a censorship regime. I think most of us do want to avoid that, even at the cost of it being possible for people to create crap like this. There can be formal social pressure, too, from the university. I’d like to see that kind of pressure more deftly applied here; fine, you can make your gross cartoons, but why the heck are you doing it on a university-funded linotype?
I thought child porn was outlawed because not because it’s vile and disgusting but because you HAVE to exploit a child to make it?
That would cover live or photo stuff, joe, but it’s a whole new world with computers. You could write fiction or draw pictures even before that, though, so it’s not a new development – just a question of degree rather than kind.
Robert, I acutally wasn’t specifically address this case. I know some others have compared it to child pron, but that taking it further than I would.
I don’t think anyone is saying that we need to create a law against this cartoon, but rather the cartoon is not fit to be reprinted in a college newpaper, and consequently the editor should have chosen not to run it.
For those of you who’d like to avoid downloading the pdf file, the “Polydongs” cartoon we’re discussing can also be viewed online here, or here.
A few comments.
1) I think what’s behind this cartoon is likely the racism and misogyny of self-centered (most likely white male) egotism, not the racism and misogyny of animus towards Latinas.
In other words, the cartoonist didn’t draw this cartoon because he (or she) personally loathes Latin@s, but because he wanted to make fun of “political correctness” by creating the least “politically correct” cartoon he could come up with.
That doesn’t mean it’s not racist and misogynistic — as I’ve often said (most recently here), being bigoted doesn’t require animus. In the case of this cartoon, while I believe that the cartoonist’s intention was to tweak “PC” sensibilities, choosing to do so in this way shows a callous indifference for the feelings of readers who aren’t white men that is itself so enormous that it amounts to misogyny and racism.
2) Wow, are some of the people defending this cartoon stupid.
3) I don’t want to see the cartoonist (or editor) formally punished or sanctioned. I think the outcry and widespread criticism are the appropriate response; and I hope that the activism leads to positive steps like the creation and funding of an alternative newspaper.
4) I’m made nervous by the idea of asking the college administration to step in and fire the editor/defund the newspaper, because I think these practices, if generally accepted, will be used against student newspapers that take radical positions or criticize college administrations.
Now that I’ve read the cartoon it really reminds me of Rehabilitating Mr Wiggles…but not as well done.
http://www.mrwiggleslovesyou.com/
When people are practicing something they miss and make mistakes. College students working at a college paper are obviously practicing. So if you want to be a cartoonist like Niel Swaab or a comic like Lenny Bruce or Bill Maher don’t you run a huge risk of crossing the line from shockingly offensive and funny in an insightful way and shocking in a dull and offensive way. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, other than I think Amp’s point No.4 is important to consider.
Of course it’s also likely the student paper is run by obnoxious dumbasses who aren’t suited for journalism.
Anybody out there read Something Positive? Since this comic looks a lot like the humour surrounding Pepito in there. In S*P, one of the characters is a sexually-exploited dwarf who speaks an unintelligible mishmash of Spanish and Portuguese.
I mention him because the comics would frequently include a horribly cruel and sexually degrading joke about him, the punchline of which he would punctuate with some bizarre quip in his pidgin Mediterranean dialect… an approach that looks similar to this.
I was wondering if this sort of humour had another origin.
The title, Polydongs (below which in small print it says True of Idiots, or something (it was hard to read)) is translated “many dicks” and sounds like gang rape to me.
Or it could just be a phallic spoonerism of “polygons”, which, considering that the cast consists of rather prickish polygons, doesn’t seem that unlikely. Although I tend to think that the author is the kind of guy who finds the very word “bukakke” funny, so he’d probably enjoy your explanation just as much.
This actually reminds me of the humor in the cartoon Red Meat, which should be familiar to fellow readers of the Onion. There’;s some child-abuse humor in there as well, usually practiced by Milkman Dan.
In that vein, I don’t know whether the cartoonist is trying to make a statement about being PC, or is just trying to write “shock humor” like Red Meat, and failing. I’d have to read more cartoons by that author to know, but they’re not very good so I don’t want to.
Amp, not sure I agree with your analysis. Mostly because the figures aren’t represented in a POSITIVE way, right? There’s a big difference between “look at these nice people you should emulate, look at the things they’re doing and emulate them” and “look at what these people are doing.”
The first is a bad idea. The second can BE a bad idea, but isn’t always.
also: white men? What’d I miss? Like you, I equate the shapes’ actions with white men, because most of the people who do that sort of shit are, in my mind, white men. But “everyone not a white man” is most of the planet. Other than Latina girls (who are pretty obviously mentioned) how is the cartoon more offensive to, say, a rich Japanese businessman than to a white man?
even if you could somehow get rid of the racist, misogynist, and sex-crime aspects of the thing, what would remain would be nothing but a toilet joke.
in a college newspaper.
most people outgrow toilet humor by, what, age ten or so? therefore, IMAO, the persons responsible ought to be fired for insufficient maturity to contribute to a higher-education level rag, even if they can’t be fired for the otherwise offensive aspects of their deeds.
Nomen, where did you go to college that toilet humor wasn’t funny? Also, good point about red meat.
Rachel S.:
Let the record show that Rachel S. and I are in complete agreement here.
And now, everyone be sure to stay inside so that they will not be harmed by the apparently incipient hail of frogs and locusts.
Surely I’m not the only person who is sick of the politically-correct rebranding of bigotry and childish hostility as “politically incorrect”. No, I wasn’t making a racist joke, I was satirically attacking PC sensibilities!
Right.
I’d like to enthusiastically second Mythago’s last point.
Yeah, but Milkman Dan is obviously crazy, there’s a certain tone to the entire strip that leads one to understand that little in there is being represented as normal or desirable, and Milkman Dan is also often hoisted on his own petard by a kid.
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