Town Hall meeting discusses slave reparations ad in 'IDS'

More than 50 students, faculty and community members gathered Tuesday night in the Teter Formal Lounge to discuss an advertisement that ran in the IDS opposing reparations for descendants of slaves. \nThe advertisement, paid for by David Horowitz, ran in Friday's edition of the IDS.\nThe panel was organized by a group of concerned graduate students, said panel moderator Tyrone Simpson, a graduate student. Afro-American studies professor Audrey McCluskey, graduate student Catherine Matthews, journalism professor David Boeyink and graduate student Damon Freeman sat on the panel.\nSimpson began the discussion with a series of questions for panelists, followed by an open forum for audience members to ask questions or comment on the issue.\nBeginning with a discussion on what type of institution a student newspaper is, debate focused on the IDS' decision to run the controversial advertisement.\nMcCluskey said a student newspaper should be as diverse as its student body, and student news should reflect the views, interests and goals of that body.\n"It should open up a larger world to them," McCluskey said.\nFreeman agreed with McCluskey's definition and referred more specifically to the running of the ad in his statement.\n"One thing to talk about is providing equal coverage -- setting up a forum for pros and cons," he said. "When that access is for sale, Horowitz has the opportunity and the money to place a very visible ad. I don't have $800 to pull out of my pocket to compete with that."\nAudience member Patrick Steinkuhl, a sophomore, said the number of students who attended the forum was evidence of how many people can be united toward a cause. He suggested the students work together to take out an advertisement.\n"It would represent the fact you're all unified," Steinkuhl said. "That would be a stronger argument than having the IDS give you space."\nMatthews said the newspaper should have taken into consideration what kind of student support the advertisement had.\n"A student newspaper is designed to speak for various communities. What concerns me is that this ad wasn't driven by a student group but by a complete outsider. They took his money and printed it without thought of student support."\nShe said it didn't foster dialogue -- Horowitz placed the advertisement and left, leaving students to deal with fallout from the ad.\nBut audience member Willie Sutherland, a senior, said he thought the advertisement fostered necessary conversation about a timely topic being debated in many publications.\n"Regardless of content, it shouldn't be censored," Sutherland said.\nPanelists agreed that the issue at hand was not whether the IDS had a First Amendment right to run the ad, but debated whether the newspaper staff was responsible in its decision to publish it.\n"It was shortsighted on the part of the IDS," McCluskey said. "It's not about press freedom. No one doubts the IDS has the right to publish the ad. It's how you actually feel when you read something like that … It's an emotional reaction as well as an intellectual reaction. I can't underestimate the fact of how I felt assaulted."\nBoeyink said the ad is a sensitive issue, but the decision to run political speech is not always easy. \n"This is not an ad that contributes to a safe, informative and educational environment," Boeyink said. "But political speech isn't always so neat and so easily controlled by the journalist. We may not be comfortable with the ad, but in our society, free speech is one that we must trust that others are going to respond and give an anecdote about a public policy issue."\nJournalists can not tell Horowitz what to say, Boeyink said, and questions arise when deciding how much to control the way someone wants to present an issue.\nBoeyink said he received a suggestion from a journalist in Detroit about an alternative way the ad could have been handled. She called the ad a "teachable moment," Boeyink said, and suggested the newspaper could have taken the money received for the ad and used it to provide a full page ad for opposition who don't have the money to take out an ad themselves. \nMatthews called the decision to run the ad "irresponsible and insensitive behavior" that contributed to an atmosphere of hurt and frustration.\n"People can't talk to a commercial ad," she said. "This is a campus that has deep racial issues and a horrible history of incidents."\nDebate surrounded the assertion of many in attendance that Horowitz distorted historical facts in the advertisement.\n"You can't have open and honest debate when he distorts historically the issues," Freeman said.\nIn answer to Freeman's point, Boeyink said political speech is often biased and facts and their interpretations are not always clear cut.\n"We ought to expect as citizens in this country that debates around issues like this are going to be full of disputes about facts," Boeyink said.\nMany in the audience found fault with the manner in which the IDS dealt with responses to the advertisement, claiming there was no open debate because the IDS was not publishing letters to the editor about the topic until its Thursday edition. \nAudience member professor Milagro Sanchez said the inability of the community to immediately respond to the ad was "deplorable."\n"What appalls me is not that the ad was published," Sanchez said, "but that there was no immediate opportunity for response."\nSanchez said allowing immediate responses gives the advertisement an entirely different dynamic, and it "loses the opportunity to tilt things to one side."\nSome students expressed concern that by running the advertisement, the IDS appeared to endorse its contents.\n"I don't care about Horowitz," junior Eduardo Torres said. "But when the only newspaper I get news from takes a paid advertisement -- to me a paid advertisement is an endorsement. And then they limit what my feedback is going to be … You have to look at how your average reader is going to look at it."\nTorres suggested the IDS could have run a statement at the top of Horowitz's advertisement to convey to readers the newspaper was not endorsing the ad's contents. But the IDS did insert the statement, "This is a paid advertisement" on top of the full-page advertisement.\nOther students said the ad was an excuse to incite racial tensions, not discuss the issue of reparations. \n"(Horowitz) is using this piece as a catalyst to ignite racism," senior Cherie Wardell said. \nWardell and several other students expressed concern that some white students believe the ad is an issue with which only minorities should be concerned.\nBoeyink agreed, citing the importance of discussing the ad in a forum where the majority audience can be reached.\nIDS Publisher David Adams, an adjunct journalism professor, was present at the forum, along with several members of the newspaper's staff.\n"We wished (the advertisers) would have passed us by," Adams said. "… In the end, we're viewpoint neutral with political ads."\nThe decision to run the advertisement was made by the newspaper's student leaders, Adams said, who thought carefully for several days before making the decision.\nSimpson ended the panel after an hour and a half of discussion and said he was pleased with the discussion it fostered.\n"People are very passionate in their views," Simpson said. "Issues of race are often seen as the problem of people of color. Racism is a community issue"