Masks Off, Curtains Closed

January 26, 2007

Diversity’s educational value is not questionable, but its future at Tufts certainly is. The experiences of living, working, and learning with persons unlike their selves prepare students for life after college, in which they will encounter and interact with individuals from many different social, cultural, and political backgrounds. It is, therefore, with great pain that the Observer witnessed several community members’ intolerant attempts to silence the Primary Source at the close of last semester.

In each of our lives we will encounter people who we do not like and with whom we do not agree. For many members of the Tufts community, some of these individuals are the staff of the Primary Source. Differences of opinion and resentment, however, are never appropriate grounds for silencing the opinions of others, especially in an academic environment, where the free exchange of ideas is of paramount importance. The similarity between the positions in which Primary Source members now find themselves and those in which they sought to place members of the African-American community is an irony we must be careful not to overlook. Just as the Source made members of the black community feel unwelcome and undeserving of their positions, so too did members of the community at large shun the writers and editors of the Source.

We now find ourselves in the midst of fulfilling this painful irony—in which the theatrics of boycotting magazines and penning hateful carols have caused us to forget that embracing diversity includes embracing those we simply don’t like. The TCU’s forum to discuss the controversy on December 6 was at its core a performance. A senate leader delivered an impassioned soliloquy; members of the administration professed their profound disappointment; and the crowd cheered and hissed at all the right times. One vaudevillian student even shredded a copy of the Source before the wide-eyed crowd, a song and dance that a local television news crew promptly broadcast to the general public. These performances may have been dramatic, but they were not productive. Indeed, it is doubtful that when Alison Hoover stood to apologize on behalf of the Primary Source that she did anything more than act the part the Tufts community asked her to play—that of the misguided but penitential conservative. Hoover’s apology could not have been anything but insincere. It was the half-hearted result of threats to close the publication or stifle its voice; it was the necessary denouement in the university’s politically correct script.

Though the necessity of acknowledging the validity of the community’s complaints while still protecting the Source from those who would silence it is understandable, Hoover’s apology reveals our inability to distinguish facts from fireworks. As a community, we now find ourselves in the grave position of acting the roles we wish were true: pretending that hate and bigotry don’t actually exist at Tufts. Such a charade, however, is as unhealthy as it is untrue. The Daily quoted junior Ashley Bethel as stating that “to cut [the Source’s’] funding or to reduce it is to silence a thought that we need to know is there.” This statement is incredibly apt, and the Daily was wise to use it as the impetus for its December 7 editorial. What is even more dangerous, however, is the result of our collective burlesque. We have silenced a voice—by pretending it no longer exists and by forcing its speakers to pretend the same. On the evening of December 6, Alison Hoover delivered an insincere apology; by that time, the carol had already disappeared from the Source’s website. Soon after, copies of the magazine had all but vanished from campus. The Source, it seems, chose to live and fight another day. After a few administrative emails and the creation of an “Executive Director of Institutional Diversity,” so too did the community choose to forget the incident or pretend it had settled it.

While the Observer recognizes the Source’s carol for the bigoted theatrics that it was, it refuses to join in the cheap circus-parade of politically correct responses that it has heard lately from many members—students, faculty, and administrators alike—of the Tufts community. Voices that cry for the silencing of others are childish ironies, and administrative press releases that say absolutely nothing are simply unacceptable. Not every elephant that steps into the circus spotlight, however, needs to leave a pile of shit—verbal or otherwise—behind it as it departs in search of the next peanut.

Tufts’ publications are some of the university’s oldest and most respected student organizations, and they have an obligation to transcend the mob’s theatrics. In the midst of such a controversy, it is necessary that the university’s publications stand together—not only to protect their voices but to ensure journalistic accuracy and accountability. The Media Advisory Board is a little-known organization that encompasses most of the university’s student publications; until now, the board’s role has been merely organizational. The Observer believes that campus publications must reshape the board into a functioning body of self-governance. Tufts’ publications should have a proper forum in which they can discuss and respond to journalistic concerns on a regular basis, free from threats and pressures to conform or be silent. The theatrics of the past month have made it painfully clear: either Tufts’ publications act to govern themselves, or the masked, playacting mob may very well do it for them.