evolution

A student guest on a K-State student-run conservative-talk radio show made a comment (That’s right, I said “a conservative radio show on a college campus.” Who knew?) regarding the movie Brokeback Mountain, calling it “Bareback Mountain”. The host later apologized (for the guest) on-air for the comment (by the guest!).

End of the story, right? In a country and a world governed by identity politics?

Not hardly:

“The whole tone was pretty condescending to gay and lesbian people,” said Christopher Renner, chairman of the Kansas Equality Coalition of the Flint Hills [website].

The comments were made last week during the show’s 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday time slot. A student responded with a complaint, and the executive student staff that runs the station and faculty advisers began considering a response.

“To me, an apology wasn’t enough,” said Steve Smethers, journalism school associate director.

Legally, Smethers said, the Federal Communications Commission requires stations in such instances to acknowledge the complaint, take action if needed, and record the complaint and response in the station’s public file. He said the complaint prompted discussions about ethical responsibilities.

Two days after the comments were made, radio station staff members received sensitivity training during a weekly meeting, and more training is being planned. The guest who made the comments won’t appear again on the show, and the host apologized on Tuesday’s broadcast, said Aaron Leiker, station manager and graduate teaching assistant. Despite requests, however, “The Right Wing Conspiracy” won’t be canceled.

To Renner, the apology made on Tuesday’s broadcast lacked sincerity. And he believes K-State’s school of journalism needs to do more to teach students about diversity, he said, noting an outcry two years ago when the student newspaper, The Collegian, didn’t cover the Big 12 Conference of Black Student Government at K-State. The newspaper and radio station are associated with the journalism school, but all students can participate in the programs.

The outcry over the BSG is something I talked about here. In that case, the Collegian’s (the campus newspaper) news director, in the opinion of the Black Student Government, failed to adequately cover a conference K-State on black leadership. The news director was fired because of this, and the newspaper’s staff were compelled to undergo a round of “diversity training.” Fired, despite that the BSG apparently did not issue a press release for the event, and despite no evidence (at least none printed or aired in any media outlet) that there was a systematic effort to ignore “black events”; and despite a public apology and additional “diversity training.”

His offense? He ran afoul of the school’s diversity coordinator, associate provost Myra Gordon. At Virginia Tech, Gordon had overseen a controversial faculty diversity initiative that built off the writing of Cathy Trower, who has argued that “merit is socially constructed by the dominant coalition” and that white male (and only white male) job candidates should be required to demonstrate a commitment to diversity before being hired.

At K-St., Gordon backed the president of the school’s Black Student Union, Natalie Rolfe, who complained after the Collegian failed to cover the Big 12 Conference on Black Student Government, which Kansas State hosted in February 2004. (The article doesn’t mention whether the BSU issued a press release before the event, but it appears that the organization did not.) In response to Rolfe’s complaint, the newspaper’s editors publicly apologized for not covering the event, developed a new system for reporting to ensure that all campus events received proper coverage, and planned “additional diversity training.”

These moves did not satisfy Rolfe, who said that she wanted “a system to make sure the paper’s more friendly to the campus (interesting conception of a newspaper’s role). She then organized a protest march, with 50 students wearing T-shirts reading “W.W.R.G.?”, for “When Will Ron Go?” Gordon, meanwhile, told Rolfe, “I’m backing you all the way,” and publicly stated that Johnson should be fired. (Gordon refused to comment for the Chronicle story.) Johnson then was removed from his position, after the college dean issued a report accusing him of a poor attitude in dealing with students — even though the dean hadn’t interviewed any of the students on the newspaper’s staff, and has refused to say with which students he did speak.

I mention this event because the aforementioned Christopher Renner of the Kansas Equality Coalition did. The difference is that he — and hence the Topeka Capitol-Journal misrepresented the event as indicative of the lack of “diversity” in the journalism department; when, in fact, the whole incident was a game of politically-correct musical chairs, where university officials scrambled for a seat at the “diversity” table, and none of them wanted to be left standing holding the “I’m A Racist!” sign at the end.

As for the joke itself, it was dumb and fairly predictable; tame by evolution’s high standard. I wouldn’t have made it, again mostly because it’s too easy; but also because it strikes the wrong tone for serious political debate. A public apology should have sufficed. Not enough, say the advocates of group politics; the wrong thoughts must be suppressed.

[All emphases and bracketed expressions are mine.]

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 11:20 and is filed under education, freedom, k-state. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.