Well, not literally. But the furore over Tharunka's article (about the Islamic Society's push for prayer rooms) is bringing it close. The Council is currently meeting, and I imagine there's a lot of angry remarks being thrown around (and quite possibly being minuted too, which makes things a lot more fun).
Beck Hynek, the Cofa Campus representative, has put forward a motion to condemn the Tharunka editorial team for publishing the original article, and to force Tharunka to retract it. She has directly alleged racism and discrimination by the university.
There's two different parts of this.
1) Alleging racism by the university. This, legally speaking, is a quite serious matter. With plenty of potential for lawsuit. I don't think you should tiptoe around issues, far from it, but you need to be aware of the consequences of getting it wrong.
2) The relationship between the SRC and Tharunka. This has been unclear throughout Arc's existence, as to quite where Tharunka exists. Is it part of the SRC? Is it part of Marketing? Is it anywhere?
Can the SRC force Tharunka to do anything? Strictly speaking, well, it's not clear.
There has been one instance I know of where the Tharunka editorial team was specifically directed to perform a particular action by the SRC. That was at the final SRC meeting before I became Tharunka editor, when the SRC called upon us to publish, in our first issue for 2008, an apology for accidental remarks published in a 2007 issue. Kind of weird that we were the ones to have to do anything, but that's the way the cookie crumbled. We put in a very short apology, without mentioning the specifics of the matter.
That, to my mind, is very different to what Beck is pushing for. She wants an entire article retracted. This strikes me as a deliberate attempt to censor content, in a magazine that is only indirectly responsible to the SRC. Needless to say, I disapprove.
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I think the SRC has a place in holding Tharunka to its Charter, but that it provides adequate protection in terms of editorial independence – oversight is fine, shutting down student opinion because you don't agree with it is counterintuitive when you're making an argument based on equality.
ReplyDeleteit = the charter
ReplyDeleteWe didn't come near to exploding and there was no motion put to the SRC to retract the article. Lets get that straight.
ReplyDeleteBut nevertheless there was discussion of Tharunka's independence, which i suppose was justified given the demand in the motion for them to print Bec's letter. But once bec found out it had been printed, it was withdrawn.
I believe that it would have been totally within our right to condemn the article if we wanted to. Tharunka is 'independent'(in the sense that noone knows or asks who their spiritual guardian is) so they can handle being condemned, in fact they might secretly enjoy it :P. But it wasn't necessary. Also, am I the only one starting to think SAlt is really starting to devalue the word "condemned"?
That my two bob.
How much value did "condemnation" have in the first place?
ReplyDelete