Earlier today, Fr. Paul Fitzgerald, the vice president for academic affairs, and Mark Reed, the vice president for student affairs, sent an email to the University community to provide an update on the recent “He Said” controversy.
Read the letter here: Letter from Vice Presidents for Academic Affairs and Student Affairs.
The letter stated that the “current funding agreement is null and void.” As a result, many students and faculty have approached myself and other staff members questioning what this means for The Mirror. At this time, we are still running as usual, producing our normal weekly issue and continuing all of our expenses, including our payroll.
At this time, we are not prepared to make an official statement in response to Dean of Students Thomas Pellegrino’s claim that the content in the “Coffee Break” section violated the terms of our funding agreement with the University. However, Executive Editor Lily Norton and myself, along with our advisor, Prof. Fran Silverman, will be meeting with Dean Pellegrino on Monday afternoon to address the statement and make our response. This meeting had been previously scheduled, as our deadline to respond to Dean Pellegrino’s request is Tuesday, Nov. 10, a date set in a letter he sent to myself a little less than a month ago. Once that has been completed, we will respond publicly as well.
We believe that it is important to work with the University and the community on this issue, so that we can ensure that we provide a newspaper that our community can be proud to read.
I want to assure everyone that The Mirror is still strong and has grown even stronger through this situation. I thank you for continuing to read every week and for your support.
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The issue here is that Fairfield’s administration is up in arms willing to fix a problem, while it willfully turns its eye from what actually CAUSES that problem.
When you say Chris Surette is acting as a satirical male college student, why does that become a shield? Why Mr. Cleary, are you and Mr. Surette able to hide behind the guise of “well we’re just acting as men are supposed to act, ahahaha.” When did it become appropriate at Fairfield for the “stereotypical male” to be a creepy misogynist who thinks his backwards baseball cap enables him to “fuck bitches” (paraphrasing here) and “rob” them of their dignity.
It’s appropriate because Fairfield has never ever done anything to change the pervasive culture of “Our Guys” evident at the school. Fairfield doesn’t want to rock the boat by suggesting that it has perpetuated an environment where they basically advertise the “stereotypical male” Mr. Surette embodies. The school has never been about empowering women, or feminism, or equality, they’ve been about attracting upper-middle class high school kids from the suburbs. Sure, they will appear upset and flabbergasted when people start protesting about this, but what did they do two years ago? What has Fairfield done since the last He Said “scandal” to ensure to women that they are valued members of this community? What have they done to ever make women feel equal? Yeah, they’ll cut funding – they’ve been dying to for years. But, to the women who protested this so aggressively, look around. You may have fought the symptom, but the illness is definitely still out there.