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Student newspaper raises tempers at Colorado College
By Bill McKeown/The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. � Black student leaders at Colorado College are fuming over an article in an April Fools' edition of the student newspaper that they call hurtful and racist.
The unsigned article, a fictional account of the launch of a channel for black children, contains racist stereotypes, including references to watermelons, crack cocaine and crime. It also contains a blackface cartoon and an offensive takeoff on the name Nickelodeon, a popular cartoon channel.
Leonard Teague and Vachon Brackett, co-presidents of the Black Student Union, said Friday they have called for the resignation of the newspaper's student editor and have complained about the article to the college administration, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League.
"We're not going to let this go," Teague said. "This is just the beginning."
Black students' reaction to the article has caused a ripple of consternation on the campus.
About 200 students attended a public forum Friday sponsored by the Black Student Union to hear outside speakers and talk about the controversy.
Soon after, the latest issue of the Catalyst hit newsstands with an apology from editor Audrey Thompson, who said she failed in her job by not proofreading the article. She wrote she would gladly step down from her position "out of shame," but she has been told by administrators and those who oversee the paper that her resignation would not solve anything. She could not be reached for comment.
The president of the college, Kathryn Mohrman, issued an open letter to the campus in which she decried the article as "hurtful and disappointing" and promised a number of initiatives to increase students' awareness of racial and ethnic issues, including an increase in funding for diversity programming and workshops for student leaders.
Later on Friday, Mohrman told the Gazette, "I was disappointed because we have high expectations about how people treat one another. And this didn't live up to that expectation. I'm hoping this will get a conversation flowing that will make more real what we really mean when we talk about diversity and respect."
That's exactly what the two leaders of the Black Student Union wanted to hear. They think the publication of the article and their own experiences on campus reflect a lack of awareness of racial issues not only among the paper's staff but also among the student body and even the faculty. They said the article was particularly disappointing because the college has publicly identified racial diversity as one of its top four priorities.
The private college has 47 black students and a total of 317 minorities among its student body of 1,952.
"There is such a thing as assault by words," said former Black Student Union president Menelek Lumumba, a senior. "And if you go to this college for four years and don't know about the power of words, then you weren't listening. Whoever wrote this put some thought into finding every possible way to use racist stereotypes to assault us."
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