Whott Wannabe Fired Over Controversial Columns

[Nbadan]

UNC student newspaper columnist fired
BY ERIC FERRERI : The Herald-Sun
[email protected]
Sep 15, 2005 : 7:23 pm ET

CHAPEL HILL -- A columnist for UNC's student newspaper has been fired following the publication of a controversial opinion piece that, at the outset, suggests that all Arabs "be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport."

But editors with the Daily Tar Heel say the author, junior Jillian Bandes, wasn't dismissed because her column proved unpopular and incendiary, as evidenced by the avalanche of letters and online responses the newspaper received after its publication Tuesday.

Rather, Bandes was fired for inaccuracies in her reporting, according to Chris Coletta, the newspaper's opinion editor.

In an explanatory column in Thursday's edition, Coletta wrote that Bandes was fired because she deceived three people whom she had interviewed and quoted in her column. The people interviewed, Arab students Sherief Khaki and Muhammad Salameh and Arabic instructor Nasser Isleem, thought they were discussing Arab/American relations since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Coletta wrote.

However, the editor explained, Bandes took their comments out of context, using them to buttress her own beliefs about racial profiling at airports.

"[Racial profiling] really doesn't bother me," Bandes quoted Khaki, one of the Arab students, as saying.

In a letter to the editor printed Thursday, Khaki said the column "might have been the most disappointing article I've read in my life," adding that the columnist's questions about racial profiling were a peripheral element of a longer conversation about terrorism and 9/11.

Making an endorsement

In the column, Bandes endorses racial profiling, saying that while she embraces Arabs she knows and has met while at UNC, they are "members of an ethnicity that is responsible for almost every act of terror committed against the West in the recent past."

Reached Thursday, Bandes acknowledged she erred in juxtaposing comments from the three people interviewed with her commentary. Just before the comment from Khaki, the Arab student, Bandes borrowed a phrase from conservative commentator Ann Coulter about the level of touching that goes on during an airport security check.

"I want Arabs to get sexed up like nothing else," Bandes wrote.

"It was a bad decision, but it wasn't a fire-able offense," she said Thursday. "Should I have done it? I probably should have worded it differently. But was I unprofessional? No."

In his editor's column, Coletta asserted that Bandes is neither "racist or an idiot." She was fired because she used the comments she solicited "recklessly and thoughtlessly," he said.

Bandes believes Coletta simply caved in to outside pressures.

"I'm extremely disappointed in my editor's reaction," she said. "It's disappointing to see them collapse under public opinion."

Drawing attention

The column quickly drew the attention of readers, many of whom denounced Bandes and took DTH editors to task for printing the column.

One letter writer, UNC junior Ellen Penninger, said she was so shocked by the column she first assumed the writer was joking. Another, senior Monica Yungeberg, wrote that profiling isn't the solution because, "The fact is neither Bandes nor those performing the searches know what a terrorist really looks like; all they see is a scapegoat for their fear."

But other readers defended Bandes' stance. Mordechai DeLuca, a UNC sop re, wrote that he's often pulled aside at airports, presumably because he's an Orthodox Jew.

"Instead of complaining and cursing 'the man,' I rather welcome it, since I recognize that it is done not out of maliciousness or hatred, but for safety purposes," DeLuca wrote. "Frankly, I welcome Ms. Bandes calling a spade a spade and explaining why she feels the practice is necessary, rather than being forced to hear the ramblings of a half-wit on the virtues of accepting others' differences while ignoring the issue completely."[/B]

Herald Sun

[Marcus Bryant]

So much for freedom of speech on campus.

[whottt]

Islam isn't a race...and Pakistanis, Iranians, and Argentinians aren't Arabs.

[Manu'sMagicalLeftHand]

Islam isn't a race...and Pakistanis, Iranians, and Argentinians aren't Arabs.

Are you sure?




Shouldn't have posted that, now Manu will be watched with "special consideration" when the Spurs visit the White House.