To the Editors of the Justice- I will keep this letter brief, as I'm sure you are utterly swamped in responses to the offensive article, and also to the forum held in the Shapiro Center on Thursday. I attended the forum and stayed for the entire two hour event, and a few things stood out to me that I felt the need to respond to.
Firstly, a great many people in our community seem to think that Brandeis as a whole and the Justice specifically would best be served by a change in leadership at the Justice, in order to guarantee that this kind of terrible mistake never happens again. To those people, I would say this: Who better to lead the Justice than the current board of editors who have just gone through this experience? Is there anyone on our campus who is now more keenly aware of the need for more editorial oversight than they are? I think that, having just been brought face to face with the results of their own error, the current editorial board is ideally suited to provide the kind of vigilance and leadership we want to see from the people who run our newspaper.
Secondly, there are also a great many people out there who feel that the Justice does not represent them, or cover items of interest to them. This sentiment was expressed time and time again during the forum, by people whose credo seems to be this: Complain, but don't take action. If you feel that the Justice doesn't represent you, join the Justice. It is an open student organization that regularly reminds us through ads and recruitment nights that it can always use more enthusiastic, talented writers. If you don't think the Justice properly represents your view of life at Brandeis, contribute your view to the Justice. Write articles, get a column, get involved. The only way you are going to be represented is if you take the action to ensure it, and the only reason the current staff of the Justice has the opportunity to share their views with us every week is because they have done exactly that.
Lastly, a sentiment I heard expressed many times last night was the need for "someone to be held accountable." Certainly, this is a reasonable request, but I felt that the subtext last night was less about accountability and more about blame; This is a natural human reaction, to look for someone to blame, for someone to be angry at, for a scapegoat, but this is an urge we must resist. What good would it do the Brandeis community and the Justice to run the editor-in-chief or sports editor out of town on a rail? One of them is quite new to his job, the other has served the Justice well for a very long time, and taking one, the other, or both as a blood offering to appease the injured parties here will do nothing but ruin two people whose error was one of oversight, not malice, and replace them with people who are not intimately familiar with the consequences of a mistake like this, as the current E-board of the justice undoubtably are.