The responsibility of any newspaper is not to relate warm, fuzzy stories about cats being rescued from trees. It is not to make people feel better about themselves, or at least, it shouldn't be.
Because the nature of journalism is supposed to be that it takes an unbiased look at issues, it often seems like the only way to spur dialogue is to dive headfirst into a controversial issue and pray someone takes enough notice to disagree with you. It's kind of like sitting in an 8 a.m. class with a professor who's trying to coax a response from a group of tired students. It's better to enter into a discussion with a statement like "affirmative action is unnecessary" than to allow the issue to remain closed.
There seems to be a wide perception that - like the rest of a newspaper - the opinion pages should remain unbiased. But note the small box that declares the opinions expressed in columns and op-eds to be the opinion solely of the person writing them. While the rest of the paper is meant strictly to inform and educate a reading population about events taking place in the world, opinions are often used in hopes of addressing issues one person considers important in a widespread way.
While The Spectrum itself may refuse to take part in certain debates - abortion, for example - because of their charged natures, opinion writing allows a way for someone to start a debate and for the university at large to respond. That's the function of the feedback section of the paper, which although typically has only run for a handful of column inches on the same page as editorials, has recently been expanded multiple times to include the voices of our subscribers, the university population.
We fault the commercial media for ignoring a multitude of topics or for spinning them in such a way to obscure issues the public feels are important, but every news publication has some kind of section where its readers can make their voice heard. This can range from the "My Views" column of the Buffalo News to the "Letters to the Editor" in TIME magazine to The Spectrum's willingness to consider unsolicited pieces submitted by students who did not choose to sign up for the course (yes, this does count as a class for every on-staff writer, reporter and editor) at the beginning of the year.
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is a famous quote by Voltaire, the French philosopher. It's a difficult statement to deal with, because enforcement of this policy requires me to defend (or at least allow) statements which I disagree with at the very core of my being. But it's also a statement which means that while inflammatory remarks may be aired, there is always the ability to argue with, respond to, and educate the holders of opinions that differ from your own.
The benefit of a newspaper is that instead of doing all this just between two people, an open and publicly printed debate enables hundreds, or even thousands, to contribute to a discussion at a time.
Every disagreement that gains a voice because of a debate in the pages of this newspaper is one less issue able to hide in the shadows of ignorance.
Before certain phrases were used in this paper, I had no trouble believing that a vast majority of white (and other non-black minority) students were unaware of the derogatory racial connotations inherent in many figures of modern-day commercial advertising. While it may be, on a subconscious level as well as in some cases a conscious one, a factor that influences everything from who a person sits next to on the bus to who is hired for a job, race relations and stereotypes are things discussed and dissected at length in very few college courses and even fewer venues in the "real world."
But thanks to the phrase used by The Spectrum, and the reader responses the paper received, no Spectrum reader can ever claim ignorance on that front again, and many have been saved - through the attempts of others to enlighten them - from making an honest mistake that ultimately only reflects on the lengths our society goes to in trying to make open discussion of issues like race into taboos.
The easy alternative to discussing any controversial subject is to back off and not talk about it. You don't anger half as many people that way, but your only reward is simply the propagation of ignorance.
In a newspaper, this should result in exactly the kind of give-and-take staff/reader collaboration that has resulted in extended feedback sections at least twice this semester and the unearthing of new points of view and perspectives along the way.
This is something that cannot be counted on when one reaches the levels of the national media, where advertising and subsidiary company ownership often has a subtle effect on what is printed, and readership numbers often mean only a miniscule number of respondents get their voice heard.
Nevertheless, it is something that should be guaranteed when reading a student-run university newspaper.
