Last week’s issue of the Union featured an article titled “Pow Wow Wow Yippee Yo Yippy Yay,” a review of Cal State Long Beach’s 38th annual Pow Wow held on campus. The article drew the ire of many CSULB alumni, current students, President F. King Alexander and the American Indian Student Council over its “ignorance and racism.” On Sunday, the article’s author, Noah Kelly, presented the American Indian Student Council with a written apology, and the Union also ran an apology in this week’s issue. This — in the wake of UCLA student Alexandra Wallace’s anti-Asian YouTube video — has started a dialogue regarding free speech on college campuses. The First Amendment guarantees all Americans the right to free speech, and in no way do we support infringing on that right. But, perhaps, Noah Kelly and the Union should have taken a pause to consider the code of ethics and human decency that we, as journalists, have a responsibility to uphold.
The Union article in question compared Indian tacos to bad Mexican pizzas from Taco Bell, Native Americans to homeless people and called the event underwhelming, disingenuous and cheap. Kelly stated in his apology in the Union that the article was meant to be a critical view of the Pow Wow itself, and not an attack on the American Indian culture. Kelly also said he received death threats after the article ran, but was not concerned about his safety. Wallace — who mocked an Asian language after ranting about Asian students in her apartment complex and the library — also received death threats and withdrew from UCLA as a result. In spite of this, some were surprised to hear that neither Wallace nor Kelly was formally punished by UCLA or CSULB, respectively. However, the reasoning behind the schools’ decisions is logical, despite how offensive the remarks were.
In response to the YouTube anti-Asian rant, UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton said, “While we were appalled and offended by the sentiments expressed in the video, we have uncovered no facts to lead us to believe the student code of conduct was violated.”
Alexander had a similar sentiment in regards to Kelly’s article, stating that while CSULB does not “support the insensitivities nor the opinions” of the writer, his words are protected under the First Amendment. But, free speech isn’t the issue in this case, and punishing Kelly and Wallace would not have been the right way of handling these incidents. The real issue here is the disregard toward journalistic ethics in Kelly’s article. While Wallace — a student at one of the most prestigious schools in California and the country — definitely should’ve known better than to post a racist video on YouTube, she was representing herself and her own warped world view in the clip. Kelly, on the other hand, as the campus editor of the Union — a publication that stands for the idea that “every student’s voice is valid” and “deserves a proper outlet” — has a lot more resting on his shoulders. In the apology in this week’s issue, the Union’s Editor-in-Chief Kevin O’Brien and Managing Editor Andy Kneis made sure to remind readers that the Union is not CSULB’s official news source, but the fact remains that the paper is extremely popular among CSULB students. Any article printed in its pages will be widely read within our campus community. So when the paper publishes an article riddled with ignorant cracks about another culture, it not only looks bad on the author, but on the campus as a whole.
To be fair, the Union has never been known for its sensitivity or kindliness, and that’s part of the appeal. We don’t read the Union for hard news stories. We read it to find scathing open letters to rude girls on the shuttle or to see Jeff Bridge’s latest piece in the Grunion. And although there is a difference between commenting on an unsavory encounter with another bus rider and openly offending an entire community, we applaud the Union and President Alexander for handling the aftermath of the matter appropriately.
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