Getting connected: Racial tensions in wake of Campus Press commentary prompts pro-active measures

Photos by Glenn Asakawa, University Communications Students at a forum listen to Campus Press adviser Amy Herdy.

The Campus Press Editor in Chief Cassie Hewlings addresses students at the forum.

Opinion writing perceived as racially insensitive this spring prompted staff members of The Campus Press to refine the online news organization's opinion policy and participate in a series of activities that broadened interaction with the CU student body.

"If It's War the Asians Want … It's War They'll Get" and "No Habla Ingles: Try Speaking English, This Is the United States" were published on consecutive days in February.

"If It's War the Asians Want …" was written as a satirical commentary on anti-Asian stereotypes. It was accompanied by a straightforward opinion piece on racism written by an Asian-American student: "A Few Words on the Asiaphilic Plague."

Both were published on the same day in the Opinions section. No graphics or text were used to connect the two pieces that addressed anti-Asian racism.

Within hours of the posting of "If It's War the Asians Want …," it was clear that in spite of its tongue-in-cheek intentions, the piece offended many readers. The previous day, the "No Habla Ingles" piece had been published without an accompanying counterpoint, and soon stories about accusations of racial insensitivity on the part of The Campus Press appeared in Front Range daily news media.

Six days after "If It's War the Asians Want …" ran, several editors of The Campus Press posted on op-ed column in which they stated they were not involved with the decision to run the controversial piece and that if they had, they wouldn't have agreed to its publication.

Discussion of readers' reactions and related ethical issues consumed four class periods of The Campus Press in the following weeks (it operates as a course within the SJMC but has a large degree of editorial independence), and student editors quickly published two apologies.

Editors met privately with leaders of CU student organizations and participated in a campus forum hosted by CU-Boulder Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson. The editors also hosted their own campus forum on diversity and organized a Student Diversity Advisory Board to provide advice on news coverage and opinions related to diversity.

Editors adopted a policy of transparency regarding the controversy the opinion pieces fueled, and they published several stories on campus reactions. They revised The Campus Press opinions policy to provide more clearly defined procedures for handling op-ed pieces and also reworded the publication's mission statement to reflect its commitment to respectfully providing diverse points of view and news coverage. An online summary of the controversy is at www.colorado.edu/news/reports/campuspress.