The editorial board of the Vassar College student newspaper announced Wednesday that it had retracted an article published in February because it included too many quotes from white students.
The Miscellany News had reported on former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson‘s withdrawal as the college’s 2022 commencement speaker, an invitation that had generated controversy on campus due to Johnson’s role in implementing the Obama administration’s policy on deportations.
On Wednesday, the editorial board of the Miscellany News published an apology and announced it was retracting the article because the article did not include enough reactions from students of color.
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The newspaper said it had initially planned to write an article exclusively focused on student reactions to Johnson’s invitation, but on Feb. 14, the day the next issue of the newspaper was being laid out for printing, the former secretary announced he would no longer deliver the college’s commencement address. In response, the Miscellany News refocused the article and removed several of the reactions from students.
“In prioritizing urgency over thoroughness, we made misguided and insensitive oversights with whom we were representing in the article and failed to provide in-depth reporting of the issue at large,” the editors wrote. “The majority of our quotations came from white students and therefore we reduced the positions of students of color to a singular, tokenized perspective. After this was brought to our attention, the paper decided to remove the article online in an attempt to prevent further harm among the communities we misrepresented.”
The editorial board said that the article “exemplifies many of the institutional flaws and structural problems within our paper” and promised “consistent action” would be taken to “address the systemic problems within The Miscellany News.”
“Journalism, including college journalism, has historically been a white-centric, often elitist field, and The Miscellany News is not immune to the consequences of these structures. The publication of the article and its subsequent removal reminds us of the systemic issues our members are implicated in, as well as the privilege and lack of diversity that we have allowed to persist for generations across our boards,” the editors wrote.
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The board said that in order to ensure the “veracity” and “integrity” of published quotations, the newspaper would establish a review board separate from the editorial board.
“As a college newspaper, we want to emphasize that though we are committed to covering news of the Vassar community and campus, our main priority will always be to report all student voices to the best of our ability,” the editorial board said.
