Be it a witch-hunt or neo-McCarthyism, over the past ten days the Justice has been victimized at the hands of heated students and a political administration. Anger, hurt and disbelief have intensified the emotionally charged response to last week's racist article far beyond intelligent, sensible and civil behavior. While the consequences of the article were dreadful, they were grossly disproportionate to the culpability of the editors involved. As an editorial board, we have rooted out the source of our error, repented for our breach of trust and responsibility and envisioned potent and long-lasting reparations to both ourselves as a newspaper and the community we represent. As student journalists our responsibilities end here.

We, however, have not been treated as journalists, but rather as muses for social justice. In addition to our anger at ourselves and at the issue at hand - not a journalistic error, but racism - we have absorbed and internalized the anger of our peers, and we have been forced to concede to demands far beyond our call of duty. Insofar as the demands have contorted our journalistic standards and duties, we have let the student body step on our necks to reach new heights of social action. But forcing the resignation of our editor-in-chief has broken that neck and perverted the integrity of the Justice as an independent medium for all Brandeis students.

Sacrificing the editor-in-chief is a punitive measure, devoid of reason and potency. By sabotaging the Justice as a vital disseminator of student opinion, it is a gratuitous, ineffective and detrimental gesture, not unlike the Brandeis Black Student Organization's forum walkout. Far more importantly, it is pragmatically absurd, as the shattered trust and respect for the Justice does not reflect the editor's incompetence. As I see it, the Justice had rightly lost its credibility, but now it will lose its spine. By offering ourselves as a whipping post for racism, a parasite which we allowed to infect our pages and consequently the whole school, we have become the enemy and the main target of demands, threats and personal insults. When the Justice was all but held hostage by an all-night hostile protest, the victimized party had become the aggressor, and the administration intervened as their main advocate.

Those who have used us as a trigger for a social agenda, be it laudable and unanimously shared, have drained me of my desire to repent and have shaken my faith in the existence of lucid and rational thought that should guide even the most justifiable emotion. The editor-in-chief is resigning as a response to insurmountable and unrelenting animosity that we feel has wildly exceeded the appropriate punitive measures. I am resigning because I cannot represent a community where such animosity exists.

- Yana Litovsky '05