Editorial: A cause for concern?

Last week’s State Hornet was like most others — it contained stories, advertisements and photographs.

But one photograph stuck out; offending some members of the Latino campus community who Thursday protested the photo’s publication in the newspaper. They believe the photo somehow portrayed their community in an unfavorable light and were quick to tell us so.

We regret that a portion of the campus was disturbed by the photo, but it clearly showed a news event — in this case an arrest — that took place at a well-attended public event on campus, the Causeway Classic.

More to the point, the photo ran with a story about university concerns about violence at campus events in general. On the same page as the photo that prompted the protest in the library quad, the State Hornet published a story about a Good Samaritan who was killed as a result of injuries he sustained in the parking lot outside the Causeway Classic.

The stories in the issue dealt with the concerns of the multiple fights at the game and the discussion of creating a task force to address security at campus events. The photo which drew protests, complemented these stories because it showed the very fight that prompted the discussion of forming the task force to see what could be done to avoid such incidents in the future.

We thought the campus would be outraged about the violence at the Causeway Classic — the four terrible fights, the campus police dragging away a suspect in a chokehold, or the tragic and inexcusable death of 21-year-old Stephen Fowler, who was trying to break up a brawl.

Instead, the only visible campus outrage so far seems aimed at the photo we published — not the more troubling issues surrounding it.