LoboOpinion
Page
4
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Opinion Editor/ John Tyczkowski/ @JCTyczkowski
opinion@dailylobo.com
Letters
Daily Lobo is crossing into realm of yellow journalism
Editor, We can’t express to you how disappointed we are with your article on the divestment resolution in Monday’s Daily Lobo. We keep wondering if we were at the same meeting. For the first time in a long time we felt engaged and united with many of our graduate colleagues who were present at Saturday’s GPSA council meeting, especially after the divestment resolution was passed. Instead of offering the facts, the Daily Lobo took a position and led its readers into taking a position against the passage of the divestment resolution. There are so many discursive and semantic moves in this piece that make us wonder if that was the intent of the writer. We also don’t understand how a resolution from a coalition of nine student organizations and a 14-5-1 vote can be represented as polarizing. By presenting it as a “polarizing issue,” Chloe Henson erased the coalition of student groups present, the powerful intersectional analysis they argued for and the fact that the resolution specifically addresses corporations such as Group 4 Securicor (G4S) that deport undocumented immigrants who are UNM students and family members of UNM students. What concerns us the most is that this piece does not portray an accurate account, especially for those individuals who were not present on Saturday. The GPSA council members had a long and serious discussion that represented various viewpoints and thus we feel we were able to make an informed decision on the resolution. We don’t believe that it is fair for the Daily Lobo to gloss over the historic passing of the divestment resolution by writing such a negative article. By writing the article in this way, Henson was able to ignore what was the most important and pertinent part of the resolution, which was the question of transparency. Transparency is in the interest of all UNM students, faculty, staff and the community and is in fact an issue GPSA is concerned with as well. It has to be noted, since the Daily Lobo doesn’t mention it, that one of the central pieces of this divestment resolution is for the GPSA to call on “UNM to create a permanent committee with student representation to review, evaluate, and monitor other issues related to socially responsible investment.” We do not want our tuition and student fee money going to corporations that oppress our families and community. But before we can stop that, we need to know what corporations UNM is investing in. In conclusion, the Daily Lobo should hold itself to higher standards of neutrality when publishing stories so charged with issues of power and human struggle. History and current events have taught us the power of the media and press. Biased journalism contributes to creating tension and animosity within the various groups involved in this issue. This slanted article was unfair to those involved in the GPSA council, the persons who presented the resolution and all of UNM. Virginia Necochea, GPSA Council Representative, Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies Melina Juarez, GPSA Council Representative, Political Science Elisabeth Perkal, GPSA Council Representative, American Studies
Polarized response to resolution was inflated Editor,
The story titled “GPSA divestment resolution polarizes students” that appeared in the Daily Lobo’s April 28 issue is emblematic of egregious reporting by the Daily Lobo. For one, the resolution passed with 10 votes in favor of it and nine votes against it while one person abstained. It is true that the voting on the resolution was preceded by some discussion, but isn’t this how democracy works? It is true that there were some representatives who were hesitant to vote on the resolution, but they were outnumbered by those who took a stand against human rights abuses. Instead of foregrounding this fact, the reporting falsely suggests a polarization when
Column
Sports, rape culture deters justice by Jason Darensburg
Sexual assault is a growing problem on college campuses, and UNM is not immune to this trend. The sad fact, according to a study published by the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, is that one in three sexual assaults on a university campus is committed by a student-athlete. Research has consistently shown that student-athletes rape and commit acts of domestic violence far more often than their peers. Several big-name universities, including UConn, Michigan State, Wesleyan, Morehouse, Yale and UC Berkeley are facing federal investigations into alleged failures of accountability and outright hostility toward victims who speak out against sexual assault. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in four women will be sexually assaulted while attending college. Jameis Winston won the Heisman Trophy last year for his stellar performance as quarterback of the Florida State Seminoles. When a fellow student accused Winston of raping her back in December 2012, it took eleven months for police to refer the case to prosecutors. A month later, the DA decided not to charge Winston, saying there wasn’t enough evidence. FSU went on to win the national championship and Winston received the Heisman. Next stop for Jameis Winston: the NFL draft. The Lobos made national headlines earlier this month when star running back Crusoe Gongbay was arrested on charges of kidnapping and rape. He has been suspended from the team pending an investigation. Gongbay was in a car with two other men when he allegedly assaulted a fellow UNM student in the early hours of April
13. According to court documents, the victim told police that three men grabbed her while she was sitting in a car outside of a party and forced her into another vehicle. The woman claims the men undressed her and forced her to have sex with them in the back seat of the car as they sped through the streets of Albuquerque. The first man allegedly raped her while Gongbay and the other man watched. Gongbay then allegedly proceeded to do the same. According to the documents, Gongbay and the other suspect were subsequently dropped off at an unknown location, and the third man then reportedly drove the victim back to UNM campus where he pulled out a gun and raped her at gunpoint. The victim immediately returned to her dorm and reported that she’d been the victim of a sexual assault. She was transported to a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Unit at UNM, where DNA evidence was collected and sent to the state crime lab. Regardless of your opinion on the allegations against Gongbay, the odds are good that he will be completely exonerated and all charges will be dropped. A recent study of sexual assault on college campuses conducted by The Center for Public Integrity found that the number of prosecutions involving campus rape cases is insignificant. Another study conducted by Jeff Benedict and Todd Crosset showed that student-athletes rarely face any formal criminal charges, or else that those charges are eventually dropped. The study found that while athletes make up only 3.3 percent of the male student population, they account for 19 percent of the sexual assault cases committed on campus. These statistics demonstrate that studentathletes are much more likely to commit sexual violence than the typical undergraduate. It’s a
sports-culture problem: Boys are taught from an early age that having lots of women is part of the reward for being a star athlete. In America, an unusually large number of college students are sexually ignorant. There is simply no way for kids to learn about responsible sexual behavior at any publicly-funded K-12 school today. In a country where educators are forbidden from actually discussing safe sex, date rape and sexual harassment are even more rarely discussed. Still, universities have an obligation to their students, faculty and the community to promote a safe environment in which anyone may acquire an education — not an environment in which data about sex offences are downplayed or suppressed, and investigations are stifled in order to protect their interests for the sake of “Johnny Football.” Despite the millions of dollars poured into college sports every year, the vast majority of athletic programs still lose money. Yet schools remain caught up in an ever-escalating athletic ‘arms race’ at the expense of academic scholarships, educational facilities and quality faculty. Transforming the rape culture endemic to many schools won’t be easy. Too often, campus sexual assault prevention programs try to focus on the responsibilities of potential victims. The most infuriating problem is that even when the victims do everything right — they report the crime promptly to authorities and they see a nurse to get a rape kit done — the institutions still refuse to fully investigate, often doing so only after pressure from outside sources. So remember, ladies: the primary interest the university has in your well being is that you continue to pay your tuition and don’t complain too much. Whatever happens, you’ll probably be blamed for it anyway.
the voting pattern is, in fact, suggestive of the growing concerns about companies that are implicated in human rights violations not just in Israel but across the world. Additionally, there are other parts of the report that I find disconcerting. As a former journalism instructor, I have insisted that journalists try to present reality in all its complexity rather than resort to the “everystory-has-only-two-sides” format. Unfortunately, this lesson has been lost on the Daily Lobo. Instead of speaking to the diverse coalition of students — including Students for Justice in Palestine, Students Organizing Actions for Peace, Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlan, the UNM Dream Team, the Men of Color Alliance, the Muslim Student Association, the Fair Trade Initiative, the Black Student Union and the UNM Arabic Language Club — to find out their interest in working hard to get this resolution
passed, the report unfortunately spends more time talking to Sarah Abonyi from Lobos for Israel to get her side of the story. It also ignores the representative from the Jewish Voice for Peace, who made a powerful case to support the resolution. While I appreciate the need to include an opposing viewpoint, why is it that the story dedicates an inordinate amount of time and space to Abonyi? What about the other members of the coalition who were present at the meeting and made a passionate case for supporting the resolution by highlighting the ways in which their own struggles were entangled with those of the Palestinians fighting the occupation? Why is it that the reporter ignored them while consciously seeking out Abonyi’s reactions? Nothing can explain this oversight other than the fact that the Daily Lobo believes that the BDS resolution has only two sides to it
while, in fact, this is an issue that spans across continents. Corporations such as G4S profit off of security regimes that operate in both hemispheres. If the reporter had paid any attention, she would have realized that a lot of the people who spoke in favor of the resolution were, in fact, not doing so for ideological reasons but had real investments in seeing it passed. Santhosh Chandrashekar UNM graduate student
opinion@dailylobo.com
Letter submission policy
n Letters can be submitted to the Daily Lobo office in Marron Hall or online at DailyLobo. com. The Lobo reserves the right to edit letters for content and length. A name and phone number must accompany all letters. Anonymous letters or those with pseudonyms will not be published. Opinions expressed solely reflect the views of the author and do not reflect the opinions of Lobo employees.