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Notre Dame student newspaper editor quits after anti-gay slur

By
CAHIR O’DOHERTY,
Irish Voice Reporter
Published Monday, January 18, 2010, 1:35 PM
Updated Monday, January 18, 2010, 2:00 PM

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Notre Dame student newspaper editor quits after anti-gay slur


Kara King, the assistant managing editor of the Notre Dame student newspaper embroiled in controversy over an anti-gay comic, resigned yesterday. In her resignation letter she wrote: “a miscommunication between another editor and myself led to the comic running without me first reading and approving the material. Regardless, no excuse can justify the comic even being considered for publication, and the duty to censor it fell to me.” 

Controversy erupted when The Observer ran an anti-gay cartoon that shocked the nation. The cartoonist, who has not yet been named, suggested that the solution to the issue of homosexuality was “a baseball bat.” 

In her resignation letter, King acknowledged that the cartoon was fueled by antipathy to gay people and added that she considered herself “solely responsible for providing a forum for this message of hate. I was the final one to check the paper that night, and am accountable for all of its content. I regret nothing more than the oversight that led to it and apologize for disgracing the paper with its printing. The comic does not reflect my views or those of The Observer in any way, and I cannot begin to quantify the humiliation in knowing that it is, ultimately, my fault.”
 

King also saw a role for Notre Dame University itself in addressing the fallout from the offending comic. She wrote, “If nothing else, the administration needs to use this instance to acknowledge that discrimination against the LGBT community is a very real problem and one that should not be tolerated. Adding sexuality to the non-discrimination clause and recognizing student groups who fight for these equal rights is overdue, and excuses for not doing so have been used for too long. This is not a problem that can be solved overnight, but the University can join The Observer in taking the first steps towards remedying it.” 

Jenn Metz, The Observer’s editor, acknowledged that she had accepted King’s resignation, adding that she greatly respected King’s courage in writing the letter to the Notre Dame community.

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8 Comments

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foxfire | Dec 04, 2010, 02:38 PM EST
sirs or madam,so the excuse is that telling it to a group--is -ok-then e-mailing it by--?-mistake is just as ok-your reasoning makes --NO--SENSE.IT's still called---BIGOTRY.

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ripley838 | Jan 20, 2010, 09:09 AM EST
More than one resignation would be appropriate.

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olovely | Jan 19, 2010, 10:58 AM EST
25 years ago some troglodyte's were making that Aids "joke" to audiences they knew shared their bigotry. It's sad and pathetic to see it being reproduced in full by the undergraduates of Notre Dame in 2010. But what will the university itself do to redress the perception that most of its students are a bunch of hateful oafs?

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GerRegan | Jan 19, 2010, 08:24 AM EST
I'd be very embarrassed right now if I graduated from Notre Dame. Does this incident represent the values young people there have learned from the Church? Or from their Catholic parents? Some real soul-searching is in order there.

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Mateo1970 | Jan 19, 2010, 12:27 AM EST
I am totally stunned because in the initial apology published by the Observer's main editor. She said that the comic was published in order to educate people about homophobia (obviously a lie). Now in an even more outrageous excuse, one of the people who submitted the comic (below) is actually claiming that "it was meant to mess with the editor" and "they didn't get the joke". All I can say is WTF?!!! These scum are now making absolutely absurd excuses to shirk any responsibility, NOT accept it.

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casey1957 | Jan 18, 2010, 06:16 PM EST
comment posted before i finished. this is an open letter from one of the cartoonists. i think it places all of them in an even worse light. apparently AIDS was deemed too controversial, but making fun of violently injuring a gay person wasn't. pathetic.i think all of them should resign, and they should have this on their permanent records: openeconomicsnd.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/off-topic-homophobia-still-a-huge-issue-at-notre-dame/ " I know. It’s awful, it should not have been published. Honestly, I feel really bad about it. BUT, there’s a story behind it. We normally create comics with a group of people and a case of beer, just throwing out random ideas. Usually we create things like this for our own stupid amusement, and the Observer people know that. Sometimes we’ll send them 3 comics over the course of the night because the first two get censored. This was one of those times. My friend told this ‘joke’ to the group and we sent it the comic to mess with the observer people (as we often do). Obviously the person working that night did not get the joke and let it through. I don’t want to in any way want to try to absolve myself from responsibility, but we did not intend for it to be published…. I’m sorry you were offended (for good reason), and we’ve written a letter to the editor apologizing and attempting to explain ourselves."

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casey1957 | Jan 18, 2010, 06:05 PM EST
not sure why the author of this post said that the cartoonist's names weren't available. they were ON THE CARTOON. they have been named since the beginning of the controversy. they are: Colin Hofman, Jay Wade, and Lauren Rosemeyer. they are all available using normal NDU.edu emails. furthermore, Colin is list in LinkedIn to make matters worse, here is an open letter from one of the 'cartoonists.' apparently the staff at the Observer felt that AIDS wasn't a good punchline, didn't want to make fun of a fatal disease, but felt that gay people would be fine to make fun of: Colin Hofman Jay Wade Lauren Rosemeyer

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Mateo1970 | Jan 18, 2010, 03:08 PM EST
The Mobile Party had a blog on blogspot. You can still read the Google cache. They published a discussion with an Observer editor who *pre-screened* and cleared the cartoon for publication. This was not some mistake. There needs to be an investigation to find out what really happened. Would Notre Dame be telling people to learn to take a joke if the cartoon had found humor in an African-American being lynched or a woman being raped?

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