Journalism works, everybody wins… whether they like it or not
We take this as an article of faith: A press free from censorship is a prerequisite for an open, modern society. It is the right and responsibility of every community, acting through journalistic institutions, to hold a mirror up to themselves, to examine every inch of their communal face — and to linger when a blemish is found.
When it works, we don’t always like what we see; hopefully, we will right the newfound wrong. Sometimes we will simply avert our eyes in shame; this too is our right. But we must resist the urge to shoot the messenger.
The ugly inclination to lash out at the press for bringing up a woefully seldom discussed issue reared its head at Yeshiva University last week. In a story broken by New Voices, the YU Beacon, one of three student newspapers at the Modern Orthodox university in Manhattan, published a personal story of a sexual encounter last Monday, initiating a frenzy of controversy at YU.
By Thursday night of last week, the Beacon, under pressure from students and administrators, chose to sever its ties to YU rather than submit itself to censorship. The article that sparked the firestorm of criticism was shocking more for what it wasn’t about than what it was about. Detailing an encounter between a female YU student and her lover in a hotel room, the anonymous first-person story is short on salacious detail. The image of her bra falling to the floor is about as steamy as it gets.
If all you knew of the controversy that came from the many news stories about it over the last week (everywhere from Haaretz to The New York Times to Gawker), you would be surprised by the tale’s ending. Toward the end, the author tells her cousin, “I made a stupid mistake,” before ending the story with this line: “The only thing I learn is how to do the walk of shame the day after.”
In short, the article was practically an Orthodox morality tale. In spite of that, the entire YU community, notably including many students, decried the article and demanded that the student council pull the Beacon’s funding if they did not remove it from their site.
We take this as a sign that the Beacon is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. Publishing the article was no breach of journalistic ethics — there were no lies, no slander, nothing like that. So why the uproar? The only logical conclusion is that the Beacon stumbled onto something that is on the minds of many in the YU community, though most are afraid to talk about it.
This is a sad state of affairs for YU, an institution whose motto is “Torah Umadda,” a reference to the Modern Orthodox philosophy of combining the study of Torah with secular knowledge.
The Written Word, the section of the Beacon that the article was published in, is unusual for a newspaper; this section is devoted to fiction and non-fiction literary works. Such a section may be strange, but this incident makes clear how important The Written Word is for the Beacon. In a relatively insular and buttoned-down community such as YU, it is difficult to get members of the community to speak openly on the record about an issue like premarital sex. The Written Word helps the Beacon bring up subjects that would be otherwise impossible to broach publicly at YU.
In the end, things look better for the Beacon and for YU than they did before. Before breaking away from YU, the Beacon received up to $500 per semester from the school. Despite the loss of that money, the Beacon is practically rolling in dough now; in the week following this mess, more than $1000 in donations have come in from supporters.
And as for YU, whether administrators and students like it or not, they got a fiercely independent press outlet out of the deal. They may not know it — many probably don’t want to hear it — but that’s certainly good news for them.
The Beacon shines on.
New Voices editorials reflect the opinion of the New Voices editorial board.
