In my view: A Beacon of Shame
When I attended college, I clearly remember that if you had done something shameful, you had the good sense to feel ashamed of the act committed. That being said, I never did anything as dumb, as farcical, or as mind numbingly harebrained as the Stern College for Women student who anonymously wrote about losing her virginity in a Manhattan hotel.
Her article titled “How Do I Even Begin To Explain This” is a first hand account of how she met her boorish Stella Artois-swilling boyfriend at a hot sheet hotel for a late night tryst. The body of the article can best be described as the dirtiest PG account of a sexual encounter ever published.
Though it refrains from anything that is overly graphic, it uses a cadence and language that just makes the reader feel uncomfortable. The fallout from this 700-word literary atrocity has been truly something to behold.
Throughout the fallout, the article’s publisher, a student-run blog, known as the YU Beacon, has stood by the content, even to the point of losing the funding they had been given by the YU student government. The Beacon, which is just under a year old, is the self proclaimed “Official Voice of the Yeshiva University Student Body” and they have never been overly burdened by such things as facts or journalistic integrity. In this matter however, the Beacons editorial staff felt that removing the article at the behest of student leaders and a majority of students would betray the rights given to us by the First Amendment, and so they bravely decided to ignore the voice that they claim to represent.
As a result of this debacle, news agencies like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times have all picked up the story and run articles with titles like “Jewish University, School Newspaper Cut Ties Over Controversial Sex Column” or “Yeshiva University Stunned By Tale of Tryst.”
For the first time, I find myself awed by the perception of wrongdoing laid at the feet of the University, as if they have been maliciously issuing gag orders on their students.
