Last week, the Boston College Heights ran a story about how three residence hall directors had resigned after getting caught smoking pot. Entitled "RDs Resign Following Drug Bust," the article ran photos of the three RDs--who happen to be black. It wasn't long before the sensitivity police hit the fan. Accusing the Heights of racial discrimination, a campus minority group proclaimed that the paper would not have termed the situation a "drug bust" if the three RDs had not been black. The group demanded an apology from the paper, which the paper promptly delivered. But, in the approved manner of these extortionate moments of campus agitprop, the apology was deemed by some to be inadequate. Campus activists then set fire to a rack of student papers to demonstrate their dissatisfaction. The damage from the fire is estimated at $500. As far as I can tell, the arsonists are not being punished.

For a refreshing contrast, and an example of a college paper that knows what it is doing and knows how to stand up for its principles, see InsideHigherEd.com's coverage of the flap surrounding The Independent Florida Alligator's publication of a controversial cartoon.

Thanks to Maurice Black for alerting me to events at Boston College.

Per Webster's Dictionary, the noun "bust" can refer to a sculptured representation of the upper part of the human figure; a woman's breasts; a failure; a business depression; a drinking spree; or a police raid. But a racist slur? You really have to be stretching to make that one....

If these so-called "activists" truly are concerned about the image of minorities on campus, maybe they should vent their spleens at the three black RAs who were smoking pot in the hallways they were hired to supervise. Or maybe they should ask those responsible for the newspaper burning why they chose crude and immature censorship over civilized dialogue. This is not a case of racist white cops and racist white reporters bringing minorities into disrepute. This is a case of minorities lowering themselves in the eyes of everyone.

As someone who worked on a student newspaper in college, I know that if activists do something to the newspaper, they will not get punished.

We had two major incidents while I was on the staff. The first, we published an article about how two women filed complaints about a certain frat. They were serious compliants that accused the frat of giving them the date rape drug. Since these allegations are rarely made at the campus, we wrote a story about the allegations themselves. It was well-written and run through a lawyer before publication. The frat knew we were running the story and stole all of the newspapers from the printer. The individuals claimed responsibility, but the University would not let us press charges. From this experience, I can tell you that the Boston College paper lost more then $500, because if the papers are not delivered, all ad fees have to be returned. Interesting angle though, students kept complaining about the story (we're anti-greek, threatening staff, telling freshman writers they will never be accepted as greeks, etc.) until they saw the following issue about the newspaper being stolen and the president of the frat apologizing. After that, many students believed that the allegiations against the frat must have been true or they would not have stolen the paper. That made them look much worse then the original story alone.

The second issue was more about verbage. The LGBTAQ Association(Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trangendered, Allies and Queers [or Questioning, it depends on who you ask]) started protesting in front of and in the newsroom because a particular student was referred to as gay (I forget the story, but I think it was a profile on the first openly gay student president). Gay, we were told, was a derogatory term and the only acceptable term to use was Queer (must be capitalized). The University, through the multicultural office, set up sensitvity workshopfor the top editors. One staffer later ran the idea of queer v. gay to editors of top newspapers at a conference. They said to never use the word queer, always gay. I guess we can never win.