Put yourself in my shoes... It's October 2003. You're in your third week as editor in chief of the flagship campus publication (don't flatter yourself, we don't have many other publications). An allusion to a racial epithet just appeared in the sports section. The Black Student Organization wants your head on a pike for the paper's less-than-alacritous response to their demands. Meanwhile, division has already started within the editorial board about how to assume accountability for the incorrigible epithet, while separating it from the paper in general - and its dedicated staff.

The University president has called you into his office. Wary to act sluggishly after criticism following the last racial controversy with the campus radio station, he is quick to denounce you and the paper in sweeping fashion, broadcasting a lie that will likely sink you in the days to come: that three editors, including you, read the article in question and saw no issues with it.

He says you should resign. You're nervous. You probably appear now even younger than 19, slouching on the sofa in Bernstein-Marcus. And as you realize that your career playacting a hot-shot editor is careening into a tailspin, you see something remarkable.

University President Jehuda Reinharz is balancing a Daffy Duck coffee mug on his lap as he talks to you. Absurd.

He's got Daffy by the beak, and you by the balls.

Writing 'The Dusty Baker Incident'

Admittedly, the title we gave this controversy, "The Dusty Baker Incident," which refers to an allusion to the word "nigger" in an Oct. 21 sports column and the subsequent firestorm of opinion, protest and resignations it prompted-was crafted with popular memory in mind.

After all, calling the event, "The Justice Incident" would forever tie up the paper's name with scandal. And naming in every reference its author, Daniel Passner '06, would only intensify the cloud that currently surrounds his name; few mistakes made in youth should follow you forever. "The Dusty Baker Incident" pegs the controversy to the Chicago Cubs' manager for whom the epithet was intended.

While this saga now has a title, no one has yet succeeded in writing a full, unbiased account of the event. What has been written about the Dusty Baker Incident, though, is not insignificant: a series of articles and editorials in this newspaper, a blurb in the Chronicle of Higher Education, two brief stories in The Boston Globe, a piece by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and a fiery poem in Free Your Voice, a campus literary magazine.

But the most ambitious attempt at capturing those frenzied moments which roiled this campus was made by Justin L. Moore '04, a former president of the Brandeis Black Student Organization and a key player in the controversy. In his manifesto, Just-Us, Moore recounts the fallout from October.

Moore's manifesto had all the simplicity of a Hollywood movie, where the unambiguously correct triumphs over the unambiguously incorrect. And it made no attempts at sparing us the requisite good-guy bravado.

Here's an excerpt from "Down With The Justice," Moore's chapter on the night of the Oct. 27 protest outside of the newsroom in the Shapiro Campus Center:

"While people were still arriving, I decided to walk up to the first floor and scout out the area where we would be protesting ... Coincidentally, while walking down the hallway, I ran into a member of the Justice walking in the other direction. He looked like he had just seen a ghost. The look of surprise was hilarious because I knew that I was the absolute last person that he wanted to see. I stared right at him and screamed, 'oh yeah.' Powerful couldn't even describe half of how I felt when I saw him run away. The stage was set for our final confrontation."

Moore's 71-page document amounts to little more than a self-righteous and ill-informed ramble of the events. But while Just-Us was ill-informed, it was not ill-conceived. The monumental reaction mounted by BBSO, other clubs in the Intercultural Center and community members warranted historical documentation. As Moore writes, "This was our Ford Hall," referring to the 1969 takeover of what was then Brandeis' administrative building to encourage the hiring of minority faculty members and the creation of the Afro- and African-American Studies department.

Moore isn't that far off. In some circles, this is regarded as Ford Hall "part deux." But that idea, I think, is another tragedy of The Dusty Baker Incident. It should not be recorded in the annals of Brandeis history as a "movement," as an act of civil disobedience that was as justified as the peacenik protests it imitated in form. Those who saw the tumult up close knew it had no hope of even intimating these protests in purpose.



A Farewell

This is my last issue as editor in chief. My term is up. My time at the top of this paper was marked by so many memorable moments; I certainly didn't need to trudge up the most painful one. But as I sat down at one of Boston's few all-night diners to think of what to write in this obligatory farewell note, I couldn't get past the event that really inaugurated my term.

Daniel Passner's column appeared in my second issue as editor in chief. By the next issue-which was published on Friday instead of Tuesday-I had resigned. Four other editors left with me. Some of us, however, never really left, ascending back to the masthead in the weeks and months following the incident. Some resigned in protest and some to appease the forces that were besieging us.

With what seemed to be the entire campus pitted against us, public relations became our only method of salvaging the paper's reputation. We did everything we could to isolate the event, to separate all of the Justice's editors, contributors and the paper's history from what I regarded as a tragic confluence of conditions that vaulted an all-too-common editorial slip-up to the level of deadly sin.

I don't mean this to be a polemic. And I write it with much trepidation. The events of October left me daunted; they shook me down to my bones. But I think I have a story that, even after all this time and all that's been written, still deserves to be told.



The Beginning

I have always derived a tremendous sense of joy from seeing students read the Justice on Tuesdays. And, at first, the reception of the Oct. 21, 2003 issue seemed to be no different. Our issue had gone to press smoothly, and in the early afternoon it appeared to be well received. Looking back, however, there were warning signs that something was amiss.

I remember a pretty girl in lower Usdan, flipping the Justice around on two fingers so her lunchmate could see, "this column by Dan Passner." And when I got home to my East Quad single, I remember a black hallmate of mine arguing passionately about something with her friend.

I spent the next three hours on the phone. I honestly can't remember who I called first-BBSO or Passner (or even if they called me), but I suppose it doesn't much matter.

It's now clear to me that during our first conversation both Passner and I were incapable of imagining the hurt and rage his words were causing the campus at that very moment.

Many of our detractors couldn't understand why Passner wasn't canned instantly. It was difficult for me to assign blame to him, though, because if Passner's column had been afforded the treatment we gave every other article in that issue, the odious quotation would have been stricken, and, for better or worse, Passner would probably still be writing for the Justice.

I naavely thought that because his column ran unedited, punishing him for writing something "stupid," as Reinharz later called it in my meeting with him, was unfair. Of course, after my first conversation with BBSO, such thoughts were quickly rendered quaint. And, as the days passed and editors began to drop like flies, Passner's departure from the staff became undoubtedly the most deserved exit.



Playing the blame game and stickball

There are few words that manage to evoke such a painful history as the one alluded to in this newspaper. But that the allusion made it to press represents an editorial gaffe for which we will never cease to apologize.

Who was really to blame? This is a question I've grappled with since that October. I do know the people who were punished exceeded in number those who were culpable.

First, there was obviously Passner, the writer, who resigned and admitted full responsibility less than 24 hours after our phone conversation. If Passner hadn't written "Dusty Baker Exposed," I'd be writing about something else now. Not blaming him, therefore, is an impossibility.

Then there's the sports editor, Rob Siegel, who was responsible for editing every story in his section. Passner's late-arriving column wasn't edited by Siegel, a doubtless source of much regret for the sports editor, one of the Justice's most dedicated and eloquent contributors.

But the blame for this started and ended with me.

It started with me because the editor in chief is both initially and ultimately responsible for everything printed in the paper; having someone around to stick his neck out if things get messy is so important, in fact, that we designate a "hit-by-the-bus editor" to step up if the editor in chief is incapacitated. It ended with me because the brouhaha was only settled with my resignation.

Before the column printed, the paper was accustomed to making journalistically "bad" mistakes. We had misspelled headlines, cut stories off short, attributed quotations to the wrong individuals, misquoted sources and published numerous photos taken by someone named "ALLCAPS."

It was difficult to imagine having one of our section editors not read a story. But it was not impossible.

College newspaper editors are typically unpaid and overworked, bound together by some as-of-yet-undetermined level of interest in some aspect of journalism. But we get the pleasure of delivering news to an insulated audience with a vested interest in reading the news of the school. But with this, come weighty expectations. While we don't see a dime, the paper is rewarded handsomely -both in advertising revenue and in funds from an activities fee attached to the undergraduate tuition bill. So you can think of the Justice as a pick-up game of stickball held in a stadium filled with 4,000 people, all of whom paid for admission.

You play ball, but it's notoriously difficult to please the fans.



Reasoning with BBSO

I first heard from BBSO shortly after talking to Passner. Shalwah Evans called me to give me her group's list of demands.

"First, Passner-gone," she said.

"Next, Rob, the sports editor-he's gone."

These two demands were coupled with some real estate on the front page for a BBSO column, later penned by Moore and titled in his distinct style, "Unbreakable." They also wanted an apology from us on the front page.

Evans was a triumph of composure in conversation, walking all over my stuttering entreaties and ignoring my attempts at contrition. She said that if the Justice did not meet each of BBSO's demands by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, "We're going to come after your job."

Passner's lightning-fast resignation gave the community's mounting anger nowhere else to go but onto the shoulders of the editorial board. While their first demand-Passner's resignation-was now irrelevant, we were foolish in essentially fighting BBSO on every other point.

We wanted the news story about what happened to go on page 1 and our apology to be in the editorial space, in the Forum section. We also wanted BBSO's piece there, and not on the front page, which we thought should be reserved always and only for news. Most damnably, we decided as an editorial board not to encourage the sports editor to resign. We would stand together, united, and try desperately to assume accountability as a board.

This last error was one of pragmatism-a principle woefully lost on the entire editorial board and on me personally during the initial days of the controversy. We reasoned that because none of us was perfect, because we've all had the experience of having our eyes gloss over late on a Monday night, we couldn't hold Siegel to a different standard.

That it was racism he missed, instead of a dangling participle, was just bad luck, we said.

The rest is history: the public forum in the Shapiro Campus Center which devolved into a circus. The ostentatious walkout that ensued. The resignation of Siegel from the editorial board. And, finally, with some encouragement from senior members of the administration, my own resignation. But most notable of all was the turbulent protest on in the early morning hours of Oct 28.



The Protest

"We're not niggers! We're not niggers! We're not niggers!" was a protest chant that Justin Moore failed to mention in his manifesto. But I'll remember it forever.

The protest started because negotiations between the Justice and BBSO came to a halt.

By far the most significant concession we had made was to delay our print date to allow BBSO time to compose a collaborative letter-which we had agreed to print on our front page. This was anathema to our cause: A newspaper exists to go to press regularly. But we were between a rock and a hard place, where there is very little room for grasping on to principles.

The night before the protest, relations between our groups reached an all-time low, and communication was cut off completely. Given that our sole reason for the print delay was to accommodate BBSO's letter, there no longer seemed to be a purpose to holding off.

While we went into production Monday night in good faith, our utter lack of contact with BBSO led to this being interpreted as an act of defiance. We were accused of going behind their backs and those of the administration.

Many students arrived to protest the Justice in hopes of getting us to stop printing; no one knows exactly, and the numbers fluctuated through the night. I would say it was about 60 people at the height of the protest who filled the hallway, pounding on the glass windows and taunting editors.

Imagine the explosion of noise which occurs when a circuit breaker goes ka-boom. Imagine that noise outside of a preschool. That was our soundtrack. And everyone was in tears at one point or another. It just took a panicky phone call to a parent or a glance from across the newsroom to get there.

But these were not tears of guilt. We weren't lamenting Passner's column. Instead, we were shocked by how disfigured and complex the situation had become. This was a room primarily of young, excessively active liberals-the kind of people who fought for social progress, and who advocated for underrepresented students in the editorials of this newspaper.

So when we heard the chant, "We're not niggers!" the prevailing reaction on the minds of people in the newsroom would've been "duh"-if only the moment wasn't so grave.

The tragedy of October, a tragedy of competing good intentions, resulted from immaturity. We were still playing stickball, but so was everyone else. BBSO thought is was in Birmingham. The Student Union regarded itself as the U.N. We were stuck in the New York Times newsroom.

BBSO realized that the legitimate pain had legs, and they ran with them to an illegitimate destination. The Justice, meanwhile, underestimated the anger and mismanaged the situation until it spun out of control. And once the heat was turned up, our contrition lagged, making our regret about what happened unclear.

In the end, all it took was a petite administrator in a black parka to bring it to end.



The Upshot

The final effect the Dusty Baker Incident will have on my life remains unseen. At a dinner with family friends six months after the event, I mentioned I went to Brandeis, to which a member of our party replied, "Didn't something happen with the newspaper there?" I had never met him before.

The incident was also not lost on a high-ranking editor of The Boston Globe, who mentioned it in an internship interview. (I didn't get that job.)

To my friends and family, the idea that I was tied up in such an affair is laughable. My mother, in particular, has often said I'm not intended for such business - that I'm "too sweet." Aside from the sweetness bit, she's probably right; the experience has made all politics, even the politics of journalism on the college level, highly undesirable.

I didn't write about October, 2003 because it defined my term as editor-in-chief of the Justice but because it was a good story. After all, writing a good story is what made me join this paper in the first place.

I think we've written many good stories since then. With our trust shorn down to almost nothing, we were given the chance to reinvent ourselves. The paper you read today takes itself seriously. It still makes stupid mistakes. But it has come to reflect accurately and fully the contributions of its talented staff and editors - their imagination, curiosity and passion. In a very real sense, we've grown up a bit since then, and I hope it shows.