Dear Editor,
I am a fee paying member of the Medium. I have been one without any complaints for the past few years because I have always believed that it is necessary for a campus to have a newspaper that provides fair and balanced coverage of what’s going on the campus. However, I do NOT believe that my fees should go towards funding a propaganda piece, a soapbox for people to stand on and bash an organization, even if they have to sensationalize a serious issue to try and fabricate a complaint.
I am, of course, talking about the apparent vendetta that you have against UTMSU. In your last editorial, you accused UTMSU of not taking action on an incident of homophobia that happened on campus. Yet in the same editorial, (so you are clearly aware of it) you acknowledge that the student did not want this issue to be publicized. My question to you is that if you are aware of the fact that the student did not want the issue to be publicized, then why would you go ahead and publish an article and 2 editorials about the issue?
The statement that irked me the most was “it’s not their fault that people, including The Medium, are talking about it.” What does that mean? Do you just blindly publish things that are written without reading them first? It IS your fault that the Medium published an article about the issue, and the fact that you were aware that doing this would go against the requests of the student make it even more reprehensible. You are using this issue to take a stab at UTMSU, which is sad at the very least.
You go on to say “Institutions need to speak up and take real action to end systematic homophobia. At our campus, allowing a mission statement to speak for itself is a very passive and disappointing choice of action or non-action, depending on how you look at it.” I agree with you wholeheartedly. However, systemic homophobia will not be ended by taking a student and making them into an example. And to speak about the incident not within the context of a larger framework of homophobia embedded in our society, but as an isolated incident, well, that just contradicts everything you just said you wanted to do.
And to talk about this incident without the consent of the student? That shows clearly that you would rather attack UTMSU than try to help somebody out.
Homophobia, like any other forms of systemic discrimination, will not be solved by making an example of an incident, unless you critically analyze it within the proper context.
I’m not really sure how you managed to take this issue, and twist it into UTMSU messing up, but please cover up, your bias is showing.
Yours,
Asas Naeem
