News

Columnist’s jokes in poor taste

I am a Boston University alumnus who has only recently just begun to engage the new digital frontiers of the internet. One of the first things I did when my wife and I bought this computer was check how my old alma mater was doing. Can you imagine how surprised I was to see the extent of Boston University’s internet presence? Well, anyway, let me tell you, I was quite pleased to discover that I might ‘keep in touch’ with BU through the web, and was especially pleased to see that the BU student journalists were going strong. I had hoped that the paper would provide a counterpoint to the official party line of Silber and company. (He was just as bad then as he is now, except now he’s not running for governor).

Overall I have found The Daily Free Press to be an essentially rewarding experience and one which I do not shy from reading in its near daily output. However, as of late, I have felt as though something has been going horribly wrong with this ‘lifeline to my past.’

I speak of the new column ‘300 Pounds and Rising,’ which, first of all, has the sort of name that has absolutely no place within an academic forum, and secondly, while starting out in reasonably bad taste, has slipped with its most recent article ‘Don’t be hating the fat kids’ into the worst sort of filth (Sept. 29, pg. 3).

Have the new editors at the Free Press gone mad? As a person with a mild weight problem, I can not stress the utter insensitivity this sort of thing represents. I come to the Free Press with an expectation that I might engage with my old school and instead am subjected to the sort of vicious taunts that characterize so much of our national discourse.

In particular, I find the title of this article, ‘Don’t be hating the fat kids,’ to be a joke in poor taste, as this article is about nothing but hating fat people, and is perhaps the single most insensitive taunt in the whole thing. If this type of article is the sort of material published by a ‘free press,’ I sincerely urge the editors of this publication to reconsider their mission and investigate the true meaning of the press within any context: university, social or economic.

I intend to no longer support Boston University with my charitable donations until I see some form of improvement in the editorial standards of the Free Press. Thank you.

Robert Broker CAS ’87

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Free Press is not financially connected to Boston University, but is rather the independent student newspaper at the university. The Free Press receives no financial assistance from the university.

Comments are closed.