Great winged hope?

Worcester State College's student-newspaper editor is under fire for printing a racist letter

by Chris Kanaracus

Alisha Attella, editor of Worcester State College's student newspaper, thought she'd be the last person to defend Dr. William Pierce. In fact, she says, she found his submission to the Student Voice's letters page to be offensive. It's hard to disagree with her. Pierce, in a letter that ran in the April 1 edition, wrote that the ongoing trial in Jasper, Texas, of two men accused of dragging a black man to his death from the back of their truck, was a media circus of the worst kind. The rambling, wholly irrational diatribe's main thrust was ultimately against the Jewish community, which Pierce, editor of the National Vanguard, a white-supremacist on-line magazine, portrayed as the power brokers behind America's media.

Attella ran the letter (though Pierce is not affiliated with the school) in a Voice issue devoted to free speech, hoping it would prompt campus-wide discussion, through which readers could examine, analyze, and then ideally dismiss the hateful rhetoric contained within. "I have always thought it important not to hide from, but expose ourselves to the things people like Pierce say," Attella says, adding "not in a million years" did she expect what would happen after she ran the letter.

Attella got a debate -- just not the type she wanted. The letter's publication has caused a campus outrage from students, faculty, and even the administration.

A number of students are so enraged by the contents of the letter, and the fact that Attella chose to print it, they are demanding that Attella resign her post or that the school slash the Voice's budget -- at the very least, they demand that all op-ed submissions be scrutinized by the administration or faculty before being deemed fit for publication. "Instead of fighting back on the letters page, they'd rather have censorship," says Attella, a sophomore who took over the editor's slot earlier this year.

The campus unrest, which has unfolded in the past three weeks (and reached new heights when WSC President Kaylan Ghosh characterized Attella's decision to run the letter as "a colossal lapse of judgment" and an "irresponsible editorial act" in a letter to the editor that ran in the April 22 edition) isn't unusual. School newspapers at both the high-school and the college level have occasionally found themselves in the middle of battles over what should and shouldn't be allowed to appear in school publications.

In December 1998, for instance, the University of Rhode Island's The Good 5-Cent Cigar had its funding temporarily frozen and its offices stormed by more than 200 students who accused the paper's staff of being racist. The newspaper had printed a syndicated cartoon that depicted a professor telling a student, "If you're the janitor, please wait until after class to empty the trash. If you're one of our minority students, welcome!", according to a December 10 Providence Journal article. The cartoon, which originally was published in a Texas newspaper, ran in The Cigar in an attempt to draw attention to problems with URI's affirmative-action plan, according to the Providence Journal.

At Cornell, in 1997, angry students burned copies of the Cornell Review that featured what editors said was a satire of several African-American courses by translating the course descriptions into "Ebonics."

On the Worcester campus, students, many from the Third World Alliance, a minority- and international-student group, have held meetings, threatened to join the newspaper, and thus oust Attella. They also confronted her at an heated student-government meeting in April.

Among the questions raised at the meeting was whether Attella had the authority to run the letter at all. Students contend that the Voice's own charter states that content "of a distasteful nature" isn't allowed, and that Attella had violated that statute by printing Pierce's letter.

Attella defends her position, saying that the provision was listed in the "fine, fine print" of the newspaper's masthead, a clause she hadn't been aware of until the controversy erupted on campus. She also maintains it was written into the masthead by a previous Voice editor several years ago. "That was that person's policy. It was not mine, and I won't abide by it."

And, says Michael Hiestant of the Arlington, Virginia-based Student Press Legal Association, the law "is clearly on the side of school-newspaper editors when it comes to decisions over content, except in cases of libel or obscenity. And the legal definition of obscenity, such as violent or child pornography, is a far cry from the contents of this letter."

But Attella's opponents maintain that legal technicalities aside, the question of good taste is the real issue at hand. They say Attella should have foregone publication of the letter, which all sides agree is outrageous and deeply racist. Perhaps the biggest complaint made by Attella's critics is that she failed to anticipate the real emotional wounds such attacks would open up within the student population.

"She [Attella] doesn't understand what she did by printing this. She dehumanized minority students. . . . This kind of thing has caused a lot of tension between minorities and white students here at the school," says Jenn-E Memnon, a Worcester State student.

That sentiment is shared not only by many of Memnon's fellow students but by several faculty members as well. One professor, who didn't want to be named, says that Attella "didn't consider the fact that minority students already have the deck stacked against them when entering a college environment. It's still a largely white arena. These students don't need to hear these kinds of things coming from their own school newspaper. It's very psychologically damaging; and that damage is hard to understand if you're not a minority yourself. What people so often forget is that you can do damage with perfectly good intentions."

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School newspapers at both the high-school and the college level have occasionally found themselves in the middle of battles over what should and shouldn't be allowed to appear in school publications.

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Another complaint by students and faculty was that Attella did not effectively categorize Pierce's letter as an op-ed piece, giving the impression that it was a news story.

"She is calling this an editorial, not a letter to the editor. She needed to say more," says Memnon.

But in the April 1 edition, Attella not only positions a (admittedly brief) disclaimer above the letter, but also on the editor's page, where a short essay outlines the reasons for printing unpopular opinions in conjunction with the free-speech issue.

Attella says, however, her arguments then and now have fallen on deaf ears. "I understand their reactions. . . . I don't blame them for it. But they just don't listen long enough."

And though support for the Voice on campus among the administration is slender at best, several faculty members have openly sided with the paper.

"What she [Attella] did supports free speech in the best way possible," says health-sciences department chairman professor Helena Brown-Semerjian, who sees the campus battle as steeped in a tragic sort of irony.

"Everyone on both sides agrees that this letter is trash. Why then, is there not a discussion of what it contains going on, rather than division over who's to blame? Division will defeat the people," Brown-Semerjian says, adding she is confused and disappointed that few faculty members have sided with the Voice.

One of the most odious charges directed at the paper has been that its motive behind publishing the letter was not a defense of the First Amendment but a ploy to boost readership -- a claim that Attella calls "foolish."

"No one read the paper before this happened. You'd see it stacked up in the corners of the buildings," says one WSC student.

Attella says that she has been working to expand ciruclation since taking over the Voice, by redesigning the paper's layout, by actively soliciting content, and by attempting to move the Voice from a monthly (or so) to a weekly puplication.

"I put a lot of my time and energy into this paper," says Attella, who claims to put in 30 to 35 hours a week at the Voice, in addition to two jobs and a full class schedule. "I'm not trying to say that I'm some kind of martyr. But the fact is, if I oversleep on Wednesday morning, the paper doesn't go out. I put a great deal of my time and energy into it."

Another student, David Natal, says Attella "is forgetting that the Voice is supported by our fees as students -- by all of us. We should have a say into what goes into it."

If, in fact, it were her "bully pulpit," Attella says, she wouldn't have filled the edition that followed the free-speech issue with responses.

"I print everything, whether I agree with it or not," she says.

Attella may not have the opportunity to do so much longer. For according to the paper's charter, any student who writes an article for the Voice can become a voting member of its staff. And, says Memnon, nearly 20 students are planning to do so soon, with the intent of voting Attella out of her editorship. Additionally, a petition seeking a similar goal has begun circulating around campus.

"We want a tasteful paper," says WSC student Sophronia Woods. "As long as she's there, I don't know if we'll get one."

The question remains as to who would take up the reins of the Voice, should Attella be ousted, and if the paper's current schedule, size, and quality -- which even Attella's opponents agree has improved during her time at the paper, except, of course, Pierce's letter -- would be maintained. "We'll see," says Woods.

Attella says she has begun marshaling support for herself, but admits she is quite worried. "I think I'm on my way out. And that would be a shame, because without me, the fact is that Worcester State will not have a paper."

"I never thought it would come to this."