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David McRaney | Journalist
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Thames quite mistaken I am deeply disturbed by the letter I received over the weekend from USM president Shelby F. Thames.In a time of such great turmoil at this university, I find it troubling the only letter to the editor to come from the president since he took office almost four years ago is about a benign, sardonic sex column. When the president of a college is willing to lambaste the student newspaper, an experimental training ground for future journalists, for something that demonstrates everything important about academic and journalistic freedoms without first speaking to us in person, it seems as though he doesn't respect us. Had he done his research, he would know that most universities in America run regular sex columns far more explicit than ours. They are a staple of all but the most backwards and spineless of college newspapers, and as USA Today wrote back in 2002, "…the emergence of such columns puts a public face on a generation coming of age in a society that has grown more open about sexuality." The columnist for Yale's "Sex and the (Elm) City" even went on to garner a book deal based on her work. Perhaps Thames doesn't want USM to lower itself to the standards of universities like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Emory, John Hopkins, Cornell and Berkeley, all of which have been running sex columns for years. I would hope Thames would rather head up a university whose newspaper was at the crest of our rapidly changing world than rotting at the bottom where Mississippi has so often found itself historically. The Poynter Institute, perhaps the most respected institution in American journalism, not only supports the publication of sex columns, but also offers suggestions as to how to better write them. Despite all of this, if he had asked, he would have learned the decision to run Glory Fink's article was not an easy one, nor was it taken lightly. He would have learned approximately ten young women and one man asked to write the piece, but we settled on a married, responsible and mature writer who was not interested in pure sensationalism. Maybe Thames is unaware of how little sex education the typical USM student receives before enrollment. If statistics offer any clue to what the average Mississippian knows before college, then it is very little. In 2000, Mississippi was ranked number one in the nation for number of teenage pregnancies, according to information from The National Center for Health Statistics. California, a state far more liberal and open than ours, ranked twenty-third on the same list, and roughly 27 million people live there compared to our 2.8 or so. So it seems to me this hushed, shameful view toward discussing sex in the student newspaper might be misplaced. Pushing the topic of sex into dark corners and treating those who are willing to write about it as if they were somehow morally reprehensible is one of the reasons we have so many 14-year-old mommas in the Deep South. There are 15,662 students attending USM. Of the eight letters to the editor I received concerning Glory Fink's column, only one came from a student; it appears on page four. But, I understand that one letter may speak for a silent assembly. I believe in the old notion that the opinions section of a newspaper is supposed to serve as a forum to stimulate public discourse on the issues affecting the audience it serves. Sex is a big part of the college experience despite what some would like to believe, and abstinence until marriage, even here, is no longer the norm. Because I believe in the marketplace of ideas, I would be more than happy to see a column in our paper approaching topics of interest to students from a more conservative, faith-based perspective. I would hope such a person would rise above the few who have contacted me concerning this article. There must be some student who could represent the handful of people who oppose this article and would be willing to step up and provide the student newspaper with a regular column detailing how they see the college experience without resorting to hate mongering or empty proselytizing. One of my journalism professors once told me, "The First Amendment guarantees nothing except the right to fight for our freedom of speech." Yet, I'm well aware of how our philosophical choreography tends to collapse in the real world because most journalists eventually give in to bureaucracy. So, here, while still in the cocoon of idealism, I must say I find it deplorable to lose the support of my president based on his own meandering political fears. It irks me to have someone like that at the helm of an institution devoted to the love of knowledge and the search for what it means to be a human being in these complex times. Originally published in The Student Printz on September 19, 2007
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