EVERY CAVALIER Daily comic controversy goes through the same cycle: community outrage, followed by an apology (or not), and then the saber-rattling between intolerance-haters and freedom-lovers. While we all love our free speech, bickering over well-known problems hampers the resolution of important problems.
The uproar over Grant Woolard's Ethiopian comic was all-too familiar. It produced silent protests and letters to the editor, and elicited a tough response from The Cavalier Daily managing board, which issued a humble apology before removing Woolard from his position as Graphics editor. All these highly-charged responses were filled with emotion but empty on substantive change. They did not address the root causes of insensitivity and institutional breakdown at the newspaper, which were all present in most recent comic controversies.
First, The Cavalier Daily's record on engaging and consulting with other minority groups on these issues is poor. Previously, it only had a formal, concrete, communication channel with the Black Student Alliance, and not with other minority groups like Asians, Latinos and Africans. Had better communication mechanisms been in place, students could have engaged The Cavalier Daily through these forums in addition to other forms of protests. This could have enhanced the newspaper's engagement with minorities and ameliorated the divisiveness and disconnectedness that the controversy caused. Rather than determining their engagement with minority groups after comics offend them in a "whack-a-mole" fashion, the newspaper should have these channels in place beforehand.
Second, editors-in-chief have always highlighted the fact that they run on tight deadlines while having to read and approve each comic strip for the newspaper. If this is so, then The Cavalier Daily should consider pushing the deadline for comic artists forward to allow editors and the editor-in-chief more time to deliberate on whether the work should be published. Even a few more hours would be sufficient to decrease the crunch-time decision-making process on a very important issue. While this may tighten the squeeze on comic artists, The Cavalier Daily must do all it can to ensure that these important, sensitive decisions are made with adequate time and sufficient breathing space. Third, the newspaper must consider revising how the managing board applies its criteria for censoring comics. Instead of restricting the application of the comic criteria to the highest decision-making levels in "top-down" fashion, it should adopt a "bottom-up" approach where comic artists and graphic editors are all aware of the criteria when they are working on or editing works. An organizational compromise between freedom of expression and sensitivity should be culturally circulated, instead of artificially imposed. It would also ameliorate the pressure on the editor-in-chief by making criteria enforcement a shared initiative, as opposed to an individual or factional burden. This, in turn, would reduce the room for errors in judgment.
Fourth, on a related point, the current comic criteria themselves should be reformed. As of now, the criteria for comics, as stated in a lead editorial last year, read: "First, does the author truthfully depict a verifiable historical or contemporary situation? If not, and the context of the work is creative, we ask two more questions. Does the author make a serious, intentional point, the censoring of which would constitute viewpoint discrimination? Also, does the author criticize or make light of a group of people for any reason other than their own opinions or actions?"
The criteria, from my conversations with editor-in-chief Herb Ladley, were intended to distinguish satire -- "ridicule of folly with the intention to change" -- and comics of bad taste which intended to ridicule things that could not be changed such as a group's race or sexual orientation. But two problems remain with regard to applying the criteria. First, how does an editor determine the author's intention? Is this the editor's interpretation, or does the editor consult the artist to ask him what he or she thought at that point in time? How do readers know that such a process transpired?
Secondly, what if a comic strip criticizes both changeable and non-changeable characteristics of a particular group? Some might argue that Woolard's cartoon was trying to promote social change by emphasizing starving Ethiopians, while incorrectly portraying their savage-like characteristics that were "unchangeable" according to the criteria. What should the newspaper do now? These issues must be addressed either through reform or a longer explication of the criteria's specifics. While the specific answers to these questions must be debated within the organization itself, greater transparency and communication regarding these problems should be promoted or at least highlighted to the community.
That being said, some changes also need to occur within the community. If more communication channels are opened up to the readership, such as open-door meetings for the public or minority group conferences to discuss potential solutions, then the respective partiesshould embrace them and work within these to facilitate broader change.Registering discontent is much easier than working toward reform, but the latter is equally, if not more important. More crucially, students would do well to get past criticizing The Cavalier Daily as a non-diverse organization because it reflects poorly only on themselves. The newspaper does not discriminate. It welcomes all races, and joining it is one good way to promote diversity of perspective.
Ultimately, the fundamental issue with all comic controversies is not how free our speech should be. Rather, it is about what we as informed members of the community use our free speech for when an issue affects us. Instead of spewing divisive, useless rhetoric, we should clamor for reform and integrate ourselves as part of the process of change.
Prashanth Parameswaran's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswarn@cavalierdaily.com.
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