Kristen Griffith | Adriane Fraser/The Whetstone
By Kristen Griffith, Co-Editor-in-Chief, The Whetstone
My stomach was empty and full of anxiety on the first day of finals week. But my final exams were the last thing on my mind.
Later that evening, I faced a hostile crowd, highly offended by the satirical cartoons featured in the Opinion section of The Whetstone. Their criticism of the cartoons is not what made my stomach turn – it was their ideas for a solution.
I assumed if I offered them the opportunity to submit Letters to the Editor, where their complaints can be featured in the next issue of The Whetstone as well as online, it would calm them down.
I was wrong.
They believed that since the cartoonist’s opinion differed from theirs, he lost the right to express it. I suddenly wished Wesley offered a mandatory course on the Constitution.
One by one, students voiced their concerns. Some were supportive, some were critical and most were aggressively demanding.
But none of them submitted Letters to the Editors.
Instead, they were satisfied with yelling illogical solutions into the microphone. One person said I should be fired. Another said they should be able to vote on which articles should be in The Whetstone.
One student shouted that the Whetstone’s fees should be eliminated. Ironically, the last student to approach the mic commented about a story featured in that same issue about the departing chaplain – a story that couldn’t have been done if we lost control of our budget.
Halfway through the two-hour forum, I noticed that it stopped being about the cartoons and became a contest of who can rile up the crowd the loudest.
A student approached the microphone twice to let everyone know that I should be convicted for hate speech and that he no longer supports The Whetstone. This was the same student who emailed me prior to the forum, telling me he had “no personal ill feelings toward The Whetstone.â€
Similarly, after a professor emailed me her concerns, she told me she respected my reasoning for publishing the cartoons. Yet she yelled at the cartoonist and me, calling us irresponsible for submitting it. I ended up reliving that moment later on that night since she posted a video of her lecture on Facebook.
The Whetstone is for all students – not only for those who are pro-choice, and not just for those who promote Black Lives Matter. We cater to all opinions about any relevant subject. We have a right to freedom of speech just like everyone else.
