The CCSU Recorder, led by editod Mark Rowan is at it again. Earlier this year The Recorder ran a charming horrific satire: Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It. Well, Rowan and and his fellow staffers have published another gem.
From the Courant:
Donis said Hispanic students and faculty are outraged by the comic, called Polydongs, in which a figure shaped like a triangle talks on a phone with a figure shaped like a square. The triangle figure says he noticed that his urine smelled like honey after eating a certain cereal, and the square figure asks if the triangle figure’s urine tastes like honey, too.
“I dunno,” the triangle replies. “I’d have to ask that 14 year old Latino girl tied up in the closet.”
I’m deeply troubled that Rowan and his staff think misogyny is appropriate for a college newspaper, even moreso that they find it funny. What kind of message does content like this send to female students? Women on campus should be able to open the college newspaper without being subjected to misogynistic jokes about sexual violence and abuse.
It’s time for CCSU to step in and find a new editor.
H/T to MLN’s Maura. Read her take here.
Source. Burgard, Matt. “CCSU Cartoon Arouses Fury“. Hartford Courant. 9/15/07
39 responses so far ↓
Frankly after looking at it; I just don’t get it.
I guess we should all be outraged - and I would be too if it made any sense to me I suppose.
Mostly it strikes me as some goofy college kids with no taste and even less sense.
Hardly anything new about any of that.
But despite the less than marginal circulation of a small college newspaper this tasteless cartoon seems to offend the left so there can be no question that all involved must be taken off immediately to be re-educated at a work camp in Siberia…or maybe we can simply place them on a work release program so long as they’re willing to apologize and donate a couple 100 hours each to the Himes campaign.
Here it is; bottom of last page (page 16).
The reason why it is creating so much news is because that newspaper for the past couple of years has had a lot of controversy, not only for the “rape” article, but also for other commentary pieces that are anti-women, anti-gay, and anti-minority.
There are crime shows every day on TV with the cops discovering some crazed sicko is hiding a woman in his closet as a sex slave. Yet, I don’t ever some the outrage from woman’s groups.
Not any different than the treatment Catherine Willy, Paula Jones, Juanita Broddrack, etc recieved from feminist groups who smeared them for the great Cliton.
G-BuryMan said:
umm… crime shows are not mocking the women like that comic strip is
I don’t believe it. I’m going to have to explain to people why a cartoon cracking a joke about the sexual humiliation of an underage Latino woman is offensive to some people.
No, you know what? Never mind. If you don’t get it, I can’t help you.
This isn’t a left/right thing, here, O My White Conservative Men. It’s about common human decency. Sure, the 1st Amendment says you can publish anything. But it doesn’t say you have to, or that it’s a good idea.
Are you seriously saying that this is some sort of feminist conspiracy, or that shadowy leftist groups are doing… what? I don’t even know. Whatever makes you feel better about the fact that a white guy did something really racist, sexist and plain offensive–whatever makes it okay for you.
And just because it annoys the left does not make it a good thing. Again, I don’t believe I have to explain this to you.
Not to mention, the writer of the strip isn’t even bright enough to say Latina instead of Latino.
>>I don’t believe it. I’m going to have to explain to people why a cartoon cracking a joke about the sexual humiliation of an underage Latino woman is offensive to some people.
Did you look it?
It’s a geometric blobs of some sort and the text doesn’t really make any sense at all.
If there’s a “joke” hidden there someplace it failed to strike me at all.
The whole rag looks to me like it could use some help - the Lampoon it’s not.
If they’re looking to be controversial (and why not? they’re college kids) they should be calling for Bushes impeachment in one issue and an invasion of North Korea in the next.
The least these kids could do would be go take back the Southwick notch from Massachusetts or maybe “relocate” the Army Tank from the New Milford Town Green to their campus.
I am a CCSU Alum. I graduated in 05 and I can tell you that the people who run the recorder think of themselves on another level than everyone else. If you don’t think what they do is funny then they think you are just not smart enough to get it.
When I first got to CCSU the Recorder was actually a good newspaper. By the time I left not so much.
Well, it actually isn’t funny. It’s pretty stupid, even without the various offensive angles. Seriously, if I were the editor I’d go find a better cartoonist anyway.
You bring up a major problem Genghis, the Recorder has a hard time finding people to write and draw for the paper. This leads to people who are not funny who think they are working for the paper.
The recruiting issue at the Recorder is a symptom of the larger problem in the CSU system: lack of support and vision for the scholastic news missions at all levels of education in state.
The CCSU Recorder or the ECSU Lantern should be dailies; training grounds for critical thinking skills where solid reporting examines the repercussions and achievements of taxpayer funded higher education.
At ECSU, the Lantern had similar issues with recruiting, and moreso with creative thinking in terms of how to frame news and deal with the events at hand. I sat in on several editorial board meetings, and was less than impressed with the operational quality of the weekly paper.
The Lantern lacked the funding to do even a basic website. If the CSU system seeks to build a reputation for being an inexpensive liberal arts alternative, it must have leadership to fix the newspaper problem.
Well done, the CCSU Recorder and the ECSU Lantern should be producing journalists and citizens. Wouldn’t it be fun if the controversy the campus papers generated was because good reporting raised questions about how the legislature underfunds higher education?
Instead, at CCSU at least, ignorance rules the roost because the system as a whole lacks a larger vision for campus and student communications. Yale University a few years ago saw communications as such an important discipline that it added courses.
We are not seeing that at our public universities. The communications department at Eastern is minimally connected to the Lantern. A more formal connection should and easily could be established. I will assume that the situation is similar at Central. Please correct me if I am wrong.
An improvement in the academic infrastructure to train print journalists at these schools would prevent mistakes like this, and none of us would be wringing our hands when dumb college kids show poor taste in print.
Why aren’t the CSU papers and communications departments building high school journalism programs statewide so that a pipeline exists to fill these print institutions with solid talent?
No one in the state of Connecticut right now could tell us how many high schools have newspapers, or how many students participate in high school or college level journalism. Why don’t any CSU communication departments have interns tracking this and other student communication barometers? In Colorado, California, Minnesota and Iowa they have such infrastructures in place. Where are we?
Within CSU, public-minded journalism education should be a fundamental goal. And I hope that David Carter realizes this and steps in to analyze the system-wide failures of the j-departments in CSU and make our state university system a national leader in public journalism education.
gee.. can’t anyone see the bigger problem here? This is what public education is producing! I’d say the state better start reconsidering some of the funding going to support this kind of crap. Essentially this rag is taxpayer supported. I am for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but this is atrocious and the fact that my taxes pay for this sort of thing is doubly obnoxious.
These kids need a serious talking to about ethics and decency. The solution here is not censorship, it is educating these so-called “jounalists”.
Ken:
Your information on the Campus Lantern is out of date. The advisor to the paper is a Professor in the Communication Department. The Lantern is trying to balance the print with electronic versions — a challenge virtually all publications are struggling with.
It would be tough to convince a college to invest in starting a Journalism department when the whole field is shrinking and quality journalism is not really value by society or even the media industry.
>>The solution here is not censorship, it is educating these so-called “journalists”.
Exactly - and seeing as no one seemed to comprehend my tongue-in-cheek commentary, hopefully your post is blunt enough for them to grasp.
>>No one in the state of Connecticut right now could tell us how many high schools have newspapers, or how many students participate in high school or college level journalism.
We obviously need a State Department of Journalism.
We could model it after the Swedish Bureau of Furniture and Suicide.
This cartoon isn’t funny. It’s borderline retarded.
That’s what you typically get from college papers, which are more often used to clean up piles of vomit in front of dormitory doorways on a Sunday morning than they are actually read.
>>We obviously need a State Department of Journalism.
You’re so right.
There is after all NO problem on the face on of the earth that more government can’t solve.
BTW, Headless, have you had a chance to read Legal Daisy Spacing? A good read I must say.
ACR said:
Ha ha! No, but man that looks hilarious… I’m going to have to check it out!
The editor’s rather glib explanation does not cut it.
“I’m not surprised that the faculty have a problem with it, because the humor gap is huge from generation to generation,” Rowan said. “Every generation shocks the generation after it.”
Well on the bright side, the paper can be useful for lining the bottom of an animal cage. Also the cartoon does have one redeeming factor, it can serve as a bad example.
Joey
Please show me evidence backing the broad generalization that society does not value quality journalism. Millions of people every day still read news.
It is our job as responsible citizens to protect and perpetuate freedoms enumerated in the Constitution.
And understanding that the Lantern is moderated by a Communications professor (Edmund Chibeau, I think, was in charge when I sat in on meetings), it is a tenuous connection at best. There is no class related to the reporting, nor is there a print reporting discipline at ECSU.
If we value the First Amendment, we need to invest more money into scholastic journalism.
Headless, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Association, a non-governmental organization, could tell you how many students participate in after-school sports.
These same sports are often covered by daily and weekly newspapers, and high school sports coverage is vital to maintaining circulation numbers for these papers. We want the athletes, but what if we couldn’t read about their exploits in the gridiron, because we failed to train sports journalists? This is just one small example.
And Headless, I am sorry I failed to communicate effectively about what I meant regarding your “State Department of Journalism.” I didn’t mean to imply Fox News, I meant something like the Colorado High School Press Association, run by students and faculty at Colorado State University.
http://chspa.colostate.edu/
Peace,
Ken
Kenny:
I think the decline of all of the major newspapers and television news operations substantiates my point. Can you provide any evidence that journalism is healthy?
All college can’t be all things to all people. It is inefficient. Training people journalists would lead them with limited career options. Ken, I think your journey shows how difficult it is to have a career in journalism. How’s Law School going?
Peace right back to you.
Joey
If you can write for a newspaper and solve the basic problems of putting a story into print (i.e. contacting people, getting them to talk, writing a coherent narrative), then you have the skills to succeed almost anywhere. They call newspapers “A daily miracle” for a reason.
I disagree wholeheartedly that the decline of major newspapers is indicative of our society’s malaise towards news. People want real, useful, truthful information more than ever. Those who can afford to are going to the internet in record numbers. Unfortunately, journalists don’t get paid a whole hell of a lot online. But that will change (I hope).
As for straight evidence of the health of journalism, I think FireDogLake’s coverage of the Scooter Libby trial was a prime example of where the internet is taking up the slack of the for-profit media machine.
The demise of news operations has more to do with the bottom-line demands of what used to be a public service than anything else. It’s not like the Hartford Courant editors want to cut reporters, they are told by the Tribune that they must cut staff because Wall Street demands high profit margins.
Law School is currently on hold as I try to pay for it by working as a deckhand on a boat sailing east from Fort Lauderdale to Thailand via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. Right now I am in Bermuda and have time and decent internet access (hence my lack of posts - and here’s a postcard to any cops reading this: “Hi! Wish you were here! The beaches in Bermuda are way better than the Bahamas!”). My current plan is to resume my studies in January. That could change.
I think part of the difficulty in my journalism career has stood with my inability to compromise on certain issues and my dislike of working for corporate news machines. If I could shut my mouth, I probably would still be quite happy at the Hartford Advocate, or running Echoes from the Streets. However, I have an inability to be quiet when I see something wrong, small or large, and I have paid a price for that.
Such is life.
I am not saying that college journalism classes are the answer to all our problems, but an intimate, working knowledge of media and its processes, an awareness of how news is made, could benefit the society as a whole. After all, the first two rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.
Fair winds and following seas,
Ken
Ken wrote that he’s “working as a deckhand on a boat sailing east from Fort Lauderdale to Thailand via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. “
God that sounds great. I’m thoroughly jealous. Safe travels.
Understanding that the Gettysburg Address is only 268 words long, I cannot hope to be the writer Abe Lincoln was. Sometimes in order to communicate effectively, you have to write more than a snarky one line comment.
Matt Burgard’s story at the Courant about the Recorder today runs a little longer than your standard news story, but boy, he hits the nail on the head with this paragraph:
“[CCSU President Jack] Miller vowed to take several steps to promote greater sensitivity and understanding among students, including the possible hiring of a full-time faculty mentor to help guide student editors and reporters. He also said the university should strive to create a journalism major for students.”
That’s my argument in a nutshell, coming from the president of the University.
Peace,
KK
p.s. - for reals - follow your bliss. I take the safe travels part seriously. Thanks.
Ken,
Uhhuh, on the other hand Principal Karissa Niehoff and Superintendent Paula Schwartz of Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington didn’t get very far administering a sensitivity lesson to Avery Doninger. Really, is there a rule of application that will tell us when we should and when we should not be exercising out First Amendment rights? What is it?
Ken:
My father was in the Merchant Marines for a time and his time at sea & in port produced many stories. Good luck & keep safe. If the State Police/HPD is monitoring this….Ken is off-shore and is not a physical threat to Governor Rell.
Ken,
Why do your post have to be SO long?
El Kabong said:
Well… perhaps a 40-year plan requires a 40- paragraph post.
Still, I find what he writes enthralling. His posts from all over the planet intrigue me… we are all like little Gobos in Fraggle Rock getting dispatches from a leftist Uncle Traveling Matt. I think it’s fun!
Ken: thanks for the clarification on your meaning. I getcha.
El Kabong said:
Because.
ken krayeske said:
LOL! Oh man… that cracks me up…
Don,
Comparing the Donninger situation to the Recorder is fallacious. Donninger, while off school grounds, criticized a school administrator. Up until the “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” Supreme Court ruling, that wasn’t a crime, but I guarantee Donninger’s principal hides behind Chief Justice Roberts’ sophistry. The First Amendment, fundamentally, to me, is about protecting unpopular speech, particularly that variety faultfinding of authority.
Sure, the Recorder employs unpopular speech, but it seems like a bunch of seventh grade boys gone overboard with student funds that could be spent better elsewhere. Should we Taser them like the student in Florida who questioned Sen. Kerry? No. Should we mentor them and demonstrate to them that journalists have power and they shouldn’t misuse it? Absolutely.
As adults, we have responsibilities, and that is one.
Peace,
KK
ken krayeske said:
So Lennon was writing about you when he sang: “In this way, Mr. K will challenge the world”?
The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
“Comparing the Donninger situation to the Recorder is fallacious.”
Ken,
I’m not comparing anything — yet. Let’s assume the situations are different, as well they may be. If they are different, we shold be able to tease out of that difference a rule of application that will enable us to discover when we should and when we should not insist that the First Amendment applies to each case. I want to know what that rule is, so that the next time you are mishandled by the Hartford police for exercising your Constitutional rights, we can whip out the rule, flourish it in front of their faces and say — “Go away.”
You just tell me what it is, preferably in less than 300 words.
In 300 words or less (I think - I have no word count):
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Substitute Principal, Governor, State Police or Angry Mob for Congress. We should not censor Mark Rowan and his ilk, only try to communicate with him and his ilk that speech should be treated with mature respect. Beavis and Butthead can be funny. We should avoid glorifying the MTV mentality and electing cartoon elements to positions of power.
I’d like to skirt value judgments here, but what does a racist, sexist cartoon add to the marketplace of ideas and democratic debate?
Also, I am troubled by the distaste for length. Sometimes issues are so complex that they merit more than soundbites. It’s not like ink is expensive on CTLP. What does reading an extra sentence cost you? Are my thoughts constructed so poorly that Cheers reruns are more interesting?
Should Hamilton, Jay and Madison have observed word limits when writing the Federalist Papers, a treatise even Bill Kristol respects as vital to self-governance? Or do we allow ourselves the luxury of a few extra words here and there, where matters so vital are concerned?
Off to the Azores. See you in a week or more.
KK
ken krayeske said:
Nice.
Ken,
While in the Azores, you might want to ponder the phrase “abridgement of speech.” In both cases speech, roughly speaking, was abridged. The Rowan case is a little more interesting to me, because what you call the “mob” abridging the speech are the kind of people you’d like to invite to te Azores with you. Pity you won’t be able to attend the many poetry readings that will be occurring in the state to protest the assault on Rowan’s First Amendment rights. You’re going to miss the Donninger bash too, Sure you don’t want to cancel your trip?
I’m not certain there will be any poetry readings at all in Connecticut about an assault on Mr. Rowan’s First Amendment rights. CCSU can shut down the Recorder if it wants to, but chooses not to. I would say Mr. Rowan is lucky he hasn’t been kicked off campus or expelled for printing what is essentially hate speech. University administrators could make a case for that. And, they have lots of options in terms of making it really difficult for the “independent” newspaper to publish (out of university office space), and to their credit they have not done so.
The whole incident is a teachable moment and CCSU appears to be using it as such. Then only person resisting that teaching appears to be Mr. Rowan.
Off campus, Mr. Rowan would have and should have been fired, and someone else would have been given a chance to be responsible for the content of the newspaper. People certainly are free to say and publish what they want, but there are consequences to irresponsibility. Someone needs to take responsibility for that cartoon, but Mr. Rowan hasn’t told anyone the identity of the cartoon’s author.
Nobody’s First Amendment rights have been trampled, nor would they be if Mr. Rowan were fired.
Oddly enough, he might as well resign, because at this point he’s only hurt his career by being there. When a grenade lands in your foxhole, lay on it and save the rest of your unit.
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