There has to be a line between journalism and advocacy. The job of promoting specific policies on behalf of specific groups has to be distinct from the job of disseminating news for an entire, diverse community. It's particularly important on a campus like Tufts, where discourse is often one-sided and the loudest voices tend to be in agreement.
For the second Tufts Community Union (TCU) presidential election in a row, students had a choice between a candidate backed strongly by the campus' activist community and one whose platform appeared more in line with the status quo. Unlike last year, this year's activist candidate, Joe Thibodeau, won out over the establishment candidate, Christie Maciejewski. (Joe Donenfeld, the runner-up whose platform stressed his openness to all sides of campus discourse, represented something of a middle ground.) The Daily, however, once again endorsed the establishment candidate and drew a great deal of criticism as a result.
Walker Bristol very eloquently argued against the Daily's endorsement in his April 25 column, "Not the student voice." Walker is absolutely on point when he says that students who dare to challenge the status quo should not be dismissed as "radicals" who are too polarizing to be effective leaders. But he is way off when he says that the media has a duty to fight for progressive causes or that the Daily had an obligation to endorse Thibodeau.
Activists do some of the most important work on this campus. A revised sexual assault policy, a less Eurocentric liberal arts curriculum, a more powerful voice for culture houses in the TCU Senate - these advances have all changed Tufts for the better, and we have people like Walker, who are often unfairly derided as whiners and radicals, to thank.
But activism is not the only important work that goes on here. Tufts students are engaged in all manner of research, entrepreneurial and community service projects that often have little or nothing to do with fighting for the underprivileged. Arguments that the Daily should prioritize activists' causes over causes that are inherently less "political" or "progressive" contribute to a campus environment in which those projects are seen as less important and less worthy of praise. Walker accuses the Daily of failing to channel "the student voice" but then goes on to say that the Daily has a responsibility to channel one segment of the student voice in particular and prioritize it over the others.
That's the job of an advocate, not a journalist. Referring to the Daily, Walker asks, "[W]hy are we here as journalists?" The question itself mistakenly lumps in the role of columnists like Walker with the role of newspaper editors and reporters. As a columnist, Walker only has a responsibility to the groups for which he chooses to advocate. Editors and reporters have a duty to all the stakeholders on every side of every issue. Activists may, for instance, be "here for every religious student whom the CSL policy threatens to exclude from their own community" (a policy I personally find reprehensible). Journalists, however, have to be here for both those students and the students who viewed the censure of the Tufts Christian Fellowship as a threat to their religious liberty. That the latter group is intrinsically advantaged by its privilege is not an excuse to silence its voice altogether.
Returning to the matter of the TCU endorsement, the Daily selected Maciejewski because it had more faith in her ability to execute an agenda than it did in Thibodeau's. The TCU president's effectiveness working in concert with administrators impacts not just the work of campus activists but also the work of those who prioritize access to better research opportunities, more career resources and more outlets for community service. Ultimately, I voted for Thibodeau not because I didn't think that was a legitimate basis on which to judge a candidate but because I had more confidence in Thibodeau's ability to work with the administration than did the Daily's managing board. The fact remains, however, that the Daily was right to acknowledge that there are qualities worth considering in a candidate other than the extent to which he or she has advocated on behalf of marginalized groups.
The notion that such an acknowledgement constitutes a violation of journalistic integrity reflects the most problematic attributes of campus discourse. We've moved from criticizing those who don't recognize the importance of rescuing the oppressed to attacking anyone who dares to acknowledge that doing so cannot be our only priority. We should be able to have conversations about sexual assault policy that acknowledge the importance of due process for both the accuser and the accused. A newspaper should be able to avoid taking an editorial opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without suffering accusations of Islamophobia. Students should be able to mention freedom of speech and religion as worthy considerations for the university's anti-discrimination policy without being written off as privileged, heteronormative white supremacists.
The fact that campus activists are advocating on behalf of the underprivileged does not exempt them from criticism. It does not mean that every intellectual challenge to their ideas comes from a place of ignorance or bigotry, and it does not mean that the Daily is obligated to treat their ideas as inherently more just or important than the ideas of other campus groups.
If any campus outlet has a responsibility to challenge ideas from the activist community -- to weigh all sides of the causes for which they advocate, even the sides that we find offensive -- it's the Daily. It should give us pause as a community that campus discourse has become so one-sided that student journalists are getting attacked for not becoming activists themselves.
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Craig Frucht is a senior majoring in psychology and a former managing editor of the Daily. He can be reached at Craig.Frucht@tufts.edu.
