Today is an Onion kind of day, in which the whole world seems to have gone down the rabbit hole. According to MassLive.com, Smith College, a high-class women’s college in Northampton, Massachusetts (I think it’s still all-female except for grad students), is experiencing a student sit-in in solidarity with the protesting students at the University of Missouri. That’s fine, but they’re trying to keep out journalists—except for those journalists who abandon objectivity and swear fealty to the students’ cause. Get a load of this (my emphasis):
In an effort to create a safe space free from potential insensitivity from the news media, activists at Smith College barred reporters from covering a sit-in Wednesday that drew 300 to 500 students.
The demonstration, organized in solidarity with students at the University of Missouri, was held from from noon to 12 a.m. in the Smith College Student Center.
The activists’ goal was to establish a place where students — prioritizing students of color and black students — could share their thoughts, feelings, poems and songs related to a rash of racially charged episodes this fall at Mizzou, as well as personal experiences of racism.
An event that draws so many people, especially one that concerns a topic of magnitude such as civil rights, is customarily covered by media outlets. But reporters who arrived at the sit-in were met with a clear message: Keep out.
Alyssa Mata-Flores, a 21-year-old Smith College senior and one of the sit-in’s organizers, explained that the rule was born from “the way that media has historically painted radical black movements as violent and aggressive.”
“We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate their solidarity with black students and students of color,” she told MassLive in the Student Center Wednesday. “By taking a neutral stance, journalists and media are being complacent in our fight.” [JAC: I’m not sure whether they mean “complicit” with the opposition or “complacent” about the students’ concerns.]
Smith organizers said journalists were welcome to cover the event if they agreed to explicitly state they supported the movement in their articles.
This is apparently the first event ever at Smith when the media was banned. What’s worse is that the administration is complicit in the ban:
Stacey Schmeidel, Smith College director of media relations, said the college supports the activists’ ban on media.
“It’s a student event, and we respect their right to do that, although it poses problems for the traditional media,” Stacey Schmeidel said.
Schmeidel went on to say that the college reserves the right to remove reporters from the Student Center because it’s a private campus.
Yes, they have that right, for reporters could be arrested for trespassing if they don’t leave when asked. But what’s invidious and reprehensible about all this is that the students ARE letting in reporters—just those reporters who “participate and articulate their solidarity with black students and students of color.” But any reporter who does this is violating her professional standards of trying to be objective.
The students are not only protesting here, but trying to control their message, so that nobody reports anything they don’t like. And that is truly Fascism of the Left: the “regressive leftism” decried by Maajid Nawaz and Nick Cohen.
Can a democracy really tolerate this kind of petulant and juvenile behavior? When black students and citizens demonstrated for civil rights in the Sixties, they asked for no such fealty from reporters. And it was the objective reporting—the mere showing of black protestors drenched with fire hoses, attacked by dogs, beaten with truncheons, and hauled off to jail—that helped America become aware of and try to rectify racial injustice.
It doesn’t work better if you don’t let journalists hear what you have to say. And who is going to trust a journalist who swears solidarity to the cause before being allowed to report on it? This is American reporting, not Pravda of the Stalin years.
Democracy is based on the presumption that transparency and the free flow of information is the best set-up for progress. Let us call these students what they are: fascists.
This attitude smacks not of a “student protest,” but of a support group. Imagine a small circle of sexual abuse victims or people who struggle with a major illness. Not only would they want privacy, but insensitive or negative judgmental responses like “maybe you asked for it” or “must be pretty nice having that handicapped parking spot” would be frowned on and those who made them probably shown the door.
Back in the 90’s Wendy Caminer bemoaned what she saw a free speech-repressive increasing culture of therapy in I’m Dysfunctional; You’re Dysfunctional. Not much has changed.
Yes! I read that Kaminer book. It’s excellent. Wow, if she were to reissue it, she’d have to incorporate a LOT of updates.
LOL this can only loosely be described as a sit-in. They reserved a room in the student union center, will hold meetings/discussions there by invitation, and have decided to limit public messaging coming out of the room. They aren’t disrupting business or other school functions* and AFAIK they have agreed to leave when their scheduled time is up. So its basically a private social function with the name ‘sit-in’ attached to it.
Yes! We can tolerate students reserving rooms in the university buildings for their private meetings and leaving in an orderly fashion once the reservation is over as much as they want. 🙂
*To be fair to the um, “protesters,” they did stage a walk out (of classes I presume) earlier in the week, to which this is a follow-up. So they have disrupted regular operations in the past. However this is not a disruption so I really don’t think it would classify as a sit-in in the standard social protest definition of the term.
They’re allowing in reporters, but only ones who swear to uphold the cause. That’s reprehensible. And, it’s the first “public” event at Smith where reporters weren’t permitted.
I still don’t see much of an issue. To draw a parallel, we often say the solution to bad speech is good speech, not banning bad speech. I think the same is true here. The solution to ‘bad press’ like what they’re doing is not to prevent them from doing it because we think its dangerous to press freedom. The solution is to do exactly what happened here and have other press agencies cover the fact that they are requiring a ‘loyalty oath’ of reporters, and let people decide what that means in terms of credibility and objectivity.
I agree with you Jerry that it is a bit like Pravda. But, from Wikipedia: “v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy” (In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth). I think we can handle an ideologically suspect report, given that we know its ideologically suspect.
Also P.S. but the link said it is scheduled to begin at 4:30pm, not noon. I guess they were afraid if they held it noon-midnight the students and professors might not show if they had to skip classes.
They’d be better off banning journalists altogether and providing a press release than doing it this way. It’d be easy enough just to say that it’s a private event, so no reporters.
Exactly.
I went to Smith, and yes, it’s still all-female, apart from the grad students. And this is pretty disappointing. I don’t see the point of doing something in solidarity if you’re not going to let people report on it.
This reminds me somehow of the 1983 mayoral election in Chicago. Three candidates, Harold Washington, Jane Byrne an Richard M. Daley, dominated the polls, but quite a few other candidates were also officially registered. A local radio station held a debate for the “minor” candidates, similar to what is being done with the current Republican debates. One of those lesser known candidates was Lyndon LaRouche associate Sheila Jones. She had a spokesperson show up and make a brief statement on her behalf to the effect that in order to protest the press blackout of her campaign, she would not be taking part in the debate.
Did she get the Darwin award for politics?
Although I agree with your overall position and points, I don’t completely agree that this is “fascism.” It seems that lately the definition of fascism has evolved to become synonymous with “authoritarianism.” Traditionally, fascism is a specific kind of authoritarianism with specific economic policies and militant nationalism. I don’t think the students are fascist in the traditional sense. Maybe I’m being stubborn and prescriptivist, but I think it is worthwhile to keep the definition of fascism unchanged and call these students authoritarians rather than fascists.
I agree with you entirely. It makes it difficult to discuss things without consistent terminology. They may be totalitarians, though.
Ditto. They are showing authoritarian-pseudo-left tendencies, but “fascist” is putting it a bit strong.
Insane
“Alyssa Mata-Flores, a 21-year-old Smith College senior and one of the sit-in’s organizers, explained that the rule was born from “the way that media has historically painted radical black movements as violent and aggressive.””
So the way to combat that is to keep out anyone members of the “movement” might behave aggressively, or violently towards. :p
Does the media represent the black lives matter movement or other similar protest movements as violent and aggressive? I cannot think of any recent reportage of that sort. Even the demonstrations after the Ferguson shooting was overwhelmingly favorable to the protestors, imo.
It’s much easier to sustain your opinions if you never hear other ones. Smith should be proud of the education they are dishing out.
Pissing off the media is just asking trouble.
Just saw that a CNN reporter was suspended because she tw*ted the wrong thing! Freedom of speech?
[https://www .rt.com/usa/322870-cnn-correspondent-suspended-refugees/]
Freedom of speech is ok, excluding reporters, who seem more often than not agents paid to distort or fabricate news.
Just a very good example of – These kids do not get it. Totally lost.
Lets invite journalist as long as they don’t be journalist. Lets also invite white people as long as they pretend not to be white.
Back in the days of the real civil rights, it was probably the coverage and journalism that got the nation and even the government to do some about it. So how do we think it a good idea to band journalism. Poor confused children.
That is ban
This is the way democracy dies. Not with a bang,nut with a whimper (apologies to TS Eliot).
Classic “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!” mentality.
Maybe the Smith and Mizzou students are following the example set by Donald Trump when he had his people remove a journalist from a press conference?
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/30/media/donald-trump-jorge-ramos-interview/
I have noticed that this seems to be a long-running trend in politics and in big business. They use the legal system and law enforcement to keep dissent to a minimum and constantly suppress speech.
I think there are three reasons why the students are getting so much flack though:
1) Society is used to those in power being able to have their safe-spaces (so its normal)
2) Society is also used to seeing students come down on the side of free-speech (so this feels different)
3) The types of people who are writing about it are academics and journalists who report of academia.
4) Also; who doesn’t love a “kids these days” type of story?
“…the way that media has historically painted radical black movements as violent and aggressive.”
Unless you count that little Martin Luther King Jr. thing…
Regarding the press, I agree with Heather that it should be all or none. But one might see how sympathetic columnists could be admitted–they are allowed to have opinions, and for the most part readers are aware of their biases. (E.g., I suspect they’d be more likely to attract a Nicholas Kristof than a George Will.)
Otherwise, this sounds like a reasonable happening for concerned students to stand with Mizzou; where there have been real, not trumped up, racial problems. Just as long as they don’t emerge with a list of “demands.”
But if I hear “safe space” one more time…aargh!
I think at some point i must have tripped and gone down the Rabbit Hole,this is crazy.
I think Sastra might be onto something; this seems like more of a private support group than any kind of protest or social activism. The latter truly doesn’t work better when you ban objective reporting on it. If students want to organize private support groups, I’ve got no problem with it, but calling them social activism seems disingenuous.
Perhaps the students realize that, compared to the objective reporting of the sixties that showed horrible violence and degradation taking place, objective reporting of this event would look more like mere coddled kids fussing?
Alas not surprising at all. Once more the “safe space” is used to shield a particular ideology, which seems to be the only function of it. Reporters cannot write about the cause, which I guess is a noble one. These people don’t want reporting, but propaganda in the conception of the postmodernist intersectionality critical race “theory” nonsense.
And they are known by now to assume every weapon in the book outside of discourse and pluralism to get their way. If they have to appropriate language from therapy and support groups (as Sastra suggests), they use that, too.