Removing Editor Was Right Decision

The Central Connecticut State University Recorder printed a column entitled "Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It" on Wednesday. In the piece, John Petroski - the paper's opinion editor - calls rape "a magical experience that benefits society as a whole" and preaches its value to both "ugly women" and prisoners alike. At the end of the piece, the author even encourages on-campus rape "because our news editors are in dire need of interesting stories for our front page."

It is incredible to think that such disgusting words are being printed in today's newspapers. Petroski's column is unconscionable, indefensible and a blight on the state's public university system - under no circumstances should it have ever been published in a student newspaper. The author's misogynistic words are incredibly offensive, particularly given the prevalence of sexual assault on American college campuses.

According to the National Center for Victims of Crimes Web site, one in four women will be sexually assaulted while in college. UConn is no exception to this national trend, as last fall a female student suffered unspeakable indignities at the hands of three sexually deviant male peers. Although not legally sexual assault at the time, Connecticut law has been amended to consider these actions sexual violence. Given these unfortunate truths, no one should be joking about rape in a university setting.

Without question, The Recorder was right to remove Petroski from his position as opinion editor. At the very least, it is an editor's responsibility to recognize vacuous and deliberately offensive material and prevent it from going to press. By producing this garbage himself, Petroski displayed not only his insensitivity and warped sense of humor, but also a profound inability to properly function as editor. There is no doubt that the paper will be better served with a more conscientious individual regulating the content of its opinion pages in the future.

The Petroski incident has damaged The Recorder's credibility and brought negative publicity to CCSU. While removing Petroski from his post will likely help quell the public relations nightmare surrounding The Recorder, the paper clearly has bigger issues it must tackle - namely, how to prevent an incident like this from ever happening again. While CCSU's administration must not censor The Recorder in the future, it does have the responsibility to better educate the paper's staff, to create informal guidelines for publication and to help create a hate-free workplace.

A good start would be to remove the PDF of the column from The Recorder's Web site.