The Response
January 26, 2007
With a copy of The Primary Source magazine in his hand, Tufts junior Jonathan Adler stood up and walked to the makeshift podium of the Tufts Community Union Senate. At any other of the semester’s weekly Sunday meetings, Adler’s statements to the TCU Senators may have gone largely unnoticed by the greater Tufts community.
But on this particular Sunday, December 10, 2006, a television camera from the CBS 4 local Boston-area news station, its bulky frame claiming a prized, central location in the packed Senate chamber, captured Adler’s every word. At the podium, Adler spoke for less than a minute before clutching The Primary Source in both hands and yanking it at the seams, a vice grip that split the magazine cleanly in two.
“I stood up and said that the only thing I could think to do was rip up the Source, and that’s what I did,” he later recounted. “What I saw in that room and what many other people saw was unbridled and unrepentant racism and intolerance. My feeling was, and still is, that these people are hardly to be reasoned with, which was one of the driving reasons for ripping up the magazine.”
Many in the audience—which consisted of about 35 TCU senators, the editors in chief of four student publications, an array of Tisch scholars, and at least 50 other students who lined the walls and crammed the entrance way of the Senate chamber—expressed their approval with applause and cheers. Others looked shocked, embarrassed, or secretly amused, dropping their heads or letting out a chuckle. TCU President Mitch Robinson interrupted the cacophony by lowering his gavel, a reminder to the peanut gallery to remain civil.
Adler’s actions would mark the half-way point of a hearing that recorded the statements of approximately 25 different speakers, including the former editor in chief of The Primary Source, Alison Hoover, who apologized for the Christmas carol “O Come All Ye Black Folk,” claiming full responsibility for failing to edit it and admitting that the satirical carol could be interpreted in a way that was racist. This meeting, however, marked only the beginning of an ongoing discussion regarding the carol in question.
Within 48 hours, a media storm emerged at the local, national, and international levels. Provocative titles such as “Racist Carol Printed in Tufts Student Magazine” and “Tufts Officials Decry Song in Student Magazine” found their way into local FOX and CBS news, The Fletcher Ledger, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, CNN, and the Associated Press. Meanwhile, a near-simultaneous flood of statements from Tufts administrators, including President Larry Bacow, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin, and Dean of Tisch College Robert Hollister, all condemned the carol. The culmination of this week of news blurbs and name-calling occurred that Saturday. Clad in red clothing, hundreds of students attended the Tufts Democrats–sponsored Unity Rally on the library patio, standing in solidarity to denounce the carol. From an outsider’s perspective, only ten days had passed between the printing of the December 6 issue of The Primary Source and the December 16 Unity Rally—only ten days between the time the first critic read “O Come All Ye Black Folk” and the time he or she stood on the library patio to condemn it.
Now a month and a half after the incident, talk of the carol has only slightly diminished. A search on Google for “Tufts Primary Source Carol” still returns approximately 130 distinct and legitimate sites—many of which are personal blogs run by college students, anti-discrimination chat rooms, and race-related website forums—including The Primary Source’s own apology page, which contains about 100 comments from web surfers. Of course, most people who mention the carol have probably never seen it on paper; hard copies of the December 6 issue are now relics, after they were abruptly removed from circulation a few days after printing. Tufts student Jonathan Adler, then, held in his hand a piece of history, before it fell to the floor in pieces. But how will this piece of history be remembered?
With Martin Luther King Jr. Day less than two weeks behind us, now may seem to be a propitious time for Tufts to be redoubling its commitment to diversity and fairness. While the famous civil rights campaigner would have undoubtedly found the Source’s Christmas carol offensive and demeaning, it is unclear as to what his stance on affirmative action would be if he were to have lived to reach his 78th birthday. Historians still debate about whether or not King’s call for social “color blindness” extended to progressive affirmative action policies. While he professed his “dream” to be color blindness, Dr. King praised the preferential policies of other countries in the face of entrenched racism and wrote about the need for “discrimination in reverse.” Although famously unequivocal in his other stances, what King’s position on affirmative action would be is difficult to pin down.
Prevention
Despite the hullabaloo surrounding the carol’s charged message, TCU President Mitch Robinson is less concerned with the past than he is with the future. Last Sunday, he and the other Senators convened for their first official meeting of the semester to discuss the future of diversity at Tufts. “We are going to deal with The Primary Source,” said Robinson, “but the larger aspect that we’re focusing on isn’t just dealing with race. It’s dealing with any form of diversity, any difference on campus. What we’re trying to push for is a school that is more understanding and respectful of differences every day.”
One way the Senate plans to do this is through the formation of one or more ad hoc committees, designed to tackle tricky situations precisely like that of the Source controversy. Overseen by the Senate and led by members of the student body, senators, and administrators, these committees will be specially created to maneuver through and link up the rigid structures that form the Senate and university bureaucracies—the extra baggage of boards, judiciaries, student organizations, and administrative subdivisions who all need to be involved in the discussion but find themselves disconnected. “Part of the problem is that the administration has one response, the students have another response, and the Senate has a response, and they’re not talking to each other in the way that we would like,” Robinson said. This means that the next time something on the magnitude of “O Come All Ye Black Folk” takes place—via a journalistic medium or otherwise—the ad hoc committees will be ready to quickly and efficiently deliberate and push forth ideas from a wide variety of viewpoints and perspectives. That’s a much better alternative, Robinson explained, than having “tons of students in an uproar, feeling very violated, and sort of unsafe on this campus.”
Interestingly, Tufts isn’t the only university in the Boston area that has had a student group recently toe the thin line between affirmative action criticism and racism. In November of 2006, the College Republicans of Boston University announced that their student-run organization would make available an academic scholarship to potential BU students who were at least one-quarter Caucasian. In other words, the GOP group created a scholarship for white students. An interesting twist on affirmative action or an unfair, racially charged criticism? With members of the administration and national news sources falling squarely on the critical side, the student body (53% white) has also met the announcement with a decidedly cool stance.
The application for the BU Republicans’ scholarship puts the group’s point bluntly: “Did we do this to give a scholarship to white kids? Of course not. Did we do it to trigger a discussion on what we believe to be a morally wrong practice of basing decisions in our schools and our jobs on racial preferences rather than merit? Absolutely.” Employing an argument similar to that used by The Primary Source to defend its satires, the BU College Republicans reverted to similar shock tactics to highlight their dissatisfaction with preferential admissions policies.
In order to better address student concerns at Tufts in the future, the Senate has resolved to improve campus dialogue. According to Neil DiBiase, the TCU Historian, the ad hoc committees will be an extension of what he sees as one of the Senate’s primary roles in the mediation of this issue: “We’re a conduit for discussion, we let people speak.” He confirmed that “The Primary Source editors have been involved, we’ve been talking to them, but our job is not to pass down judgment and say, ‘Hey, what you did was wrong.’ Our job is to bring people together and say this is how the students feel.” Nevertheless, certain members of the Senate have suggested passing a resolution that would set journalistic guidelines for integrity, while still respecting freedom of speech and affirming journalistic creativity. Direct censorship of The Primary Source, then, is an option rarely mulled over, although the Senate resolution—which is still in the preliminary stages—might also be used to code a clear chain of responsibility for journalistic organizations on campus. “Just a standard,” stated DiBiase. “People want to know that every publication on this campus is held to the same standard. They’re publishing with the Tufts name, and they’re representing all of us whether they like it or not.”
Conflict
Whether they like it or not, the editorial staff members of The Primary Source have found themselves, if not quite at the center of the controversy, then close to it. For some members, it can be difficult to soak up all that has happened in the last month and a half. “Being called a racist is frustrating,” explained Douglas Kingman, the new Editor-in-Chief of the Source, “because we know the intent of the carol was anti-racist.” According to Kingman, the intentionally-satirical carol “attempted to pick out absurdly unbelievable stereotypes” as a tool to illustrate that judging others by skin color is a ridiculous concept. To do so is “arbitrary and wrong,” he added.
Like former Editor-in-Chief Alison Hoover, however, Kingman realized shortly after publication that misinterpreting the carol’s message was an altogether probable outcome. Thus, they voluntarily removed the sensitive carol from the website and prepared to issue a retraction at the weekly Senate meeting, only to find that two, huge television cameras would beat them there: “We decided that the Senate meeting was an excellent opportunity to set the record straight…With this level of cooperation and our acknowledgement of the misunderstanding, it seemed awry that someone had chosen to escalate the situation by inviting the outside media.”
Indeed, the invitation of local news cameras from FOX 25 and CBS 4—which would spawn a calamitous chain of national media attention, angry alumni phone calls, and administrative damage control—is just one of a series of incidents where Kingman feels The Primary Source’s apologetic efforts have gone unappreciated. Kingman explained, “The Primary Source has never been contacted by the administration during the controversy in any way. We have done much to communicate with the campus, and yet the pressing need for ‘dialogue’ that has been stressed by upset parties in this controversy…they seem disinterested in talking to us.” He cites a series of constructive emails and letters to President Bacow and Dean of Students, Bruce Reitman, all of which have gone unheeded or ignored.
Although notable for its offensive overtones, The Primary Source carol echoes a larger national debate about the value of race-based admissions and the importance of an ethnically and ideologically diverse learning environment. With conservatives broadly aligned against preferential treatment and the historical civil rights record ambiguous on the subject, the national discussion over affirmative action is sure to occupy campus newspapers for some time still.
Not all buy into the claim that the crafters of “O Come All Ye Black Folk” had good intentions at heart. As a longtime English lecturer with years of experience working with Tufts students, Professor David Valdes Greenwood is not surprised that The Primary Source eventually crossed the line. Here and elsewhere, he has found that those groups in charge of satirical campus magazines often “play upon the easy categorization of some other group” in order to amuse themselves. “What is shocking is how naked this particular bit of satire was—far more revealing than its author or authors even seemed to know,” Valdes Greenwood exclaimed.
He continued, “The excuse of a ‘well-intentioned but poorly executed attack [on affirmative action]’ borders on the near meaningless. Using a racial term in the title and then appending that to the notion that all the title’s subjects are low achievers can hardly be considered ‘well-intentioned.’ You simply cannot introduce the subject of race and equate it with something negative (poor grades) and then be applauded for your wit.”
Kingman acknowledges that humor and satire can sometimes be misunderstood, and in doing so, he reiterates the importance of integrating a variety of methods—”strategies,” as he calls them—to bring conservative viewpoints to the campus. This includes not only satire, but serious opinion pieces and graphical illustrations, which have been the bread and butter of The Primary Source for years. Essentially, the magazine will remain unchanged and continue to tackle the same issues it always has, including affirmative action. “At its core, The Primary Source does not exist to offend,” said Kingman. “We strive to make our intentions as clear as can be, but on occasion we err. Everyone does not have the same sense of humor or metric for being offended.”
Professor Valdes Greenwood thinks otherwise. “I’m sure [the carol] sounded funny late at night when read aloud to someone who shared that opinion, but in light of day, its true character is clear: it is merely racist dogma, regardless of the race, gender, or age of its author,” he said.
Education
If “O Come All Ye Black Folk” is no more than racist dogma, then logically, the definition of “racist” needs to be given. What constitutes racism, anyway? Why was the carol so hurtful to so many people, and in what way? Do Tufts students know the complicated history behind affirmative action? Why the general lack of understanding?
Part of the job of the newly appointed Executive Director of the Office of Institutional Diversity (OID), Lisa Coleman, is to help Tufts students, faculty, and staff answer those tough questions. In her new role, Coleman—who has taught in the Women’s Studies and American Studies departments as well as directed the Africana Center, but will now cede some of those roles to attend to her new position—will deal primarily with educating the campus about diversity.
“[The OID] is to set a mission that diversity is part of academic excellence. My charge is to make sure that where we don’t have diversity initiatives, we make assessments and incorporate new diversity initiatives,” Coleman explained. In short, the OID is primarily research-based, working behind the scenes to assess and ensure that the various institutions around campus get the diversity resources and programs they need. For example, one of Coleman’s tasks will be to develop curriculum training for university managers and staff that incorporates diversity. “It’s really about infusing diversity into all aspects,” she said. “Sometimes diversity is on the margin, but it’s about infusing the institution with diversity within the infrastructure.” Another of her tasks is to assist with the planning of the February 7 conference on diversity, which will feature a town hall meeting, speakers who will address stereotype and climate issues, and presentations by members of the bias intervention team.
But what happens if those who need the education most are the same people who refuse to seek it out? Coleman considers the marketplace to be a natural bargaining chip. “I don’t know if we can prevent the Source from publishing something again,” she said, “but if you want to be a top-notch scholar or a top-notch executive, you really do have to think about diversity in all these different ways.”
Although Coleman’s appointment as Executive Director had been secured before the Source controversy, seeing the carol spurred her to take on the job right away. With regards to The Primary Source, Coleman is very optimistic: “I do think that [the Source] has put diversity in the forefront of many people’s minds. It’s not that it hasn’t been heard of, but this has really served as a catalyst…At any rate, to see this kind of response from the students, faculty, staff…that’s an amazing feet in many ways.”
On the other side of the country, at the University of Michigan, the school’s historic dedication to diversity has been met with resistance from the state’s residents. Long a staunch supporter and early adopter of affirmative action admissions policies, U. Michigan is now being forced to leave ethnicity out of its admissions process. A statewide debate about the merits of affirmative action has followed the success of a ballot initiative that aimed to “ban affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin.” While heeding the new law, the university continues to pursue the matter in the federal judicial system and work out loopholes to continue its former policies. By enacting a law banning affirmative action, Michigan follows Washington and California, which already have similar laws on the books.
Resolution
Clearly, under President Bacow’s presidency, Tufts’ commitment to diversity has been bolstered—doubly so in the face of The Primary Source’s carol. Efforts within the Tufts community to express disgust at the carol’s publication have been echoed by criticism delivered by The Primary Source cofounder Brian Kelley in a letter he sent to the community in December (the letter can be found on The Observer website). Referring to the carol as “garbage” and castigating the paper’s current iteration for “inciting reaction through hate,” Kelley minced few words in his reflection on the Source’s latest issue.
What happens next with The Primary Source remains to be seen. In an interview with The Observer, President Bacow, when asked about the importance of expressing non-mainstream political thought on campus, remarked, “I have said frequently that great universities embrace diversity in every possible dimension. We learn from our differences and that includes differences in political ideology.”
The President of the Black Men’s Group, Biodun “BK” Kajopaiye, spoke strongly on the issue at the Senate meeting in December. In the wake of the carol, his organization hopes to engage other cultural communities and extend their network of communication to other groups on campus. When asked about the future of diversity at Tufts, BK replied, “It’s very easy for somebody of the same race at Tufts to know sincerely nothing about somebody else of another race or culture, even amongst minority students. That’s why I think it is very important that people who are the head of organizations, like myself, need to take that extra step.”
He continued, “The administration can create the environment of ‘diversity,’ but it’s up to the student body to grow in it.”