DESPITE all the glory and attention that comes with being a law student here at Mr. Jefferson's World of Learning, life is not a complete panacea. Like most law students, I have student loans - large, behemoth-sized loans that might eventually pay for the entire expansion of the car tax cut. In any event, I need money. I need a second job. In short, I need to write a screenplay. Heck, if Matt Damon and Ben Afleck can write something while in school, maybe I can do the same.
The plot of this exciting drama is, as the people in Hollywood say, based on a true story. Actually, it is a true story. I couldn't concoct this wonderful tale of courage and strength without the help of the good, active students at Brown.
The entire story centers around the disgusting take-over of the local campus newspaper by an evil and vicious individual. This evil person - his real name is David Horowitz, but, for dramatic purposes, I'll add a "Doctor" to his name - purchased an advertisement in the campus paper. The advertisement espouses the most vicious of ideas: independent political thought.
In his ad space, no doubt purchased with money made from selling the blood of Chinese political prisoners, "Dr." Horowitz lists ten reasons why "Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too." The advertisement argues against an issue that has grown in popularity over the past few years, the federal government's payment of cash to decedents of former slaves as a way of atoning and apologizing for the slave system.
The style of Horowitz's listing parallels that of the Bill of Rights. Among the major points are: "There is no one group that benefited exclusively from [slavery's] fruits," "The reparations claim is one more attempt to turn African-Americans into victims," "What about the debt blacks owe to America?"
Because he doesn't discuss the problems with his ideas, and through his use of such inflammatory language, Dr. Horowitz will no doubt be identified as the evil villain, much like Cobra Commander or Skeletor.
The students offended by these controversial ideas will be the heroes of the story. After the Brown Daily Herald printed the advertisement, these students proceeded to take 4,000 newspapers circulated on the relevant day. They replaced the newspapers with flyers detailing the "unacceptable insensitivity" of the Brown newspaper. Finally, in actions that would have made Patrick Henry grin like a schoolgirl, the aggrieved students attempted to walk into the newspaper's newsroom and destroy the final 100 copies of that day's edition. Members of the paper's staff had to prevent protesters from taking additional papers from its office.
The Brown Daily Herald clearly had taken a step into the dangerous unknown when it chose to print the Horowitz advertisement. The campus papers of Columbia, Harvard, the University of Massachusetts and even our own Cavalier Daily refused to print the offensive ad. As an example of the rage these angered students possess, the University of California-Berkeley newspaper found itself on the wrong end of a paper-tearing demonstration in its newsroom after it printed the ad. Then, in a miracle of miracles, the paper saw the light and decided to apologize, saying it had become an "inadvertent vehicle for bigotry."
The Brown Daily Herald, in contrast, has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing on its part. Said the paper: "We will not apologize for printing a legitimate advertisement that may offend some of our readership." The nerve of such people.
For those unable to grasp the sarcasm of this column, Horowitz's advertisement may be very offensive to some folks. That advertisement, however, is an opinion on one legitimate political issue. A newspaper, including the University's own Cavalier Daily, has an obligation to print political advertisements that do not cross the line into blatant racism. Students upset by such ads have an obligation to protest the ideas, to organize, and to neutralize such ideas. They do not have an obligation to stifle the dissemination of one person's opinion. If the opinion is, in fact, crazy, people reading the paper will realize that, and the issue will die without comment. By throwing a temper tantrum, the Brown students have brought more attention to the advertisement than it would have had otherwise. They might want to reconsider this strategy the next time someone prints a similarly controversial ad.
(Seth Wood's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at swood@cavalierdaily.com.)
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