Column: Processing the racial epithet article
Editor’s Note: The following story discusses subjects that some may find difficult to process. It was written to explain the process behind the news story titled “USC Aiken employee uses racial epithet at university-sponsored event.” It is recommended that you read this column alongside the news article.
In the field of journalism there are often difficult choices that must be made, usually by people like me who are in a position of authority. These choices typically go unexplained to the general public, but I felt it necessary to express the reasons behind the decisions that were made by the newspaper this week.
News Editor Noelle Kriegel, Business Manager Cole Maddox and I, the Editor-in-Chief, went to an event called “The Blank Word” on Wednesday, Jan. 22. Kriegel had planned on covering the event for the news section of our upcoming issue.
During the event, Diversity Initiatives Coordinator Travis Hardee spoke about slurs that have been used against ethnic groups and the LGBTQ community, along with the choices that some members of those communities have made to reclaim them.
The audience members were given opportunities to make statements in response to his presentation and ask questions, but one USC Aiken staff member who attended—a white woman—used her moment to say a racial slur with a long and dark history, in front of dozens of students.
I won’t be typing the word out in this column, but our news article on the matter contains direct quotes that use the word spelled out. This is one of those difficult decisions that I mentioned earlier.
Our process began with the decision to write the article, which was comparably the easiest choice of the week. As much as I’m sure some would prefer that we shrug our shoulders and keep moving, we knew that it needed to be addressed.
Next came the decision on whether to include Maureen Quinn’s name in the article. When Kriegel spoke to her after the event, she refused to give her name. However, she is a university staff member, who was quickly recognized by multiple people who were present.
Her status as a university employee played a large role in our choice to include her name. Though she is only an audit coordinator for the records office, she still represents the school to a point—especially when she is at a university-sponsored event.
So, when her identity was revealed to us by students who were present, we wanted to include it in our article.
As this was clearly a sticky situation, I chose to contact multiple journalists—both students and professionals—to get their take on the matter. I also met with our organization’s adviser, Jeff Wallace, who was in the field of journalism for decades. All I spoke with agreed that her name should be included.
Kriegel, who was writing the story, was concerned that there would be legal ramifications later, but we all assured her that at an open, public event where anyone (student, faculty or stranger on the street) could attend, her statements are public record.
We contacted Quinn later in the week and told her that we would be including her public statement, with attribution, in an article, and asked if she would like to give a comment on the record. She did so, though her response offered little remorse.
She even chose to use the word once more in her email correspondence, citing the “academic” nature of the event. This brought us to the most difficult decision of all.
“I don’t want to type out that word,” said Kriegel in a phone conversation with me late Thursday night. I could hear the emotion in her voice, which was audibly shaking. “It doesn’t feel right.”
Though I knew the AP stylebook—a journalist’s guide to writing in a newspaper—stated that if the n-word was in a direct quote and was of great pertinence to the story it should be spelled out, I also knew that my staff and I could face great backlash for including it.
Aside from contemplating this in my own mind, I spoke to the same journalists I had contacted, along with several more student journalists that I met at a national conference. Everyone agreed that the word should be written out.
Kriegel and I read multiple articles that included the word, along with articles written about writing the word out. We researched and spoke to experts, as well as consulting our own consciences.
Eventually, we decided that the word would be written out because we believe that it would not have the same impact otherwise. We knew that it wouldn’t quite feel as startling as when we all heard Maureen Quinn say it out loud in the SAC Mezzanine on Wednesday, but surely people would understand better if they could see the entire quote for themselves.
We had a lot of fear going into this week’s production of the newspaper, but as journalists it is our job to confront those fears head-on and work through them to provide accurate, relevant information to our readers.
Rosa Parks once said, “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”
The news article discussed in this story can be found here.
Columns are written from the perspective of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other staff members. Letters to the editor can be emailed to cmy@usca.edu and will be published at the editorial staff’s discretion.
