Editorial creates firestorm

Tempers flared in Rollins College’s Bush Auditorium on Thursday afternoon as students, teachers and the media sifted through the ashes of a firestorm of immigration controversy. The resulting verbal melee called out the college for lack of stewardship on journalism education and first amendment issues.

“I think this is a common problem on campus,” student William Allred said of the school’s treatment of freedom of speech. “We aren’t told how to express our opinions. We’re just told ‘Don’t do it.’”

An opinion piece that argued against giving citizenship to children born in America to illegal immigrants had riled contention quickly after it published in Rollins’ Sandspur newspaper on March 17 and rapidly circled the globe online.

Columnist Jamie Pizzi’s piece “Illegal babies should be illegal citizens” hit the Internet on St. Patrick’s Day, a day on which Americans celebrate a patron saint of one of America’s most persecuted immigrant groups up until the 20th century: the Irish.

“In comparison to my grandmother, it offends me how easily these ‘anchor babies’ can enter the country without paying their way,” Pizzi wrote.

Word quickly spread around the school, and mass e-mails from teachers soon followed.

More than 300 people wrote responses on the story’s web page alone.

Some in the audience at the open forum on Thursday chastised teachers for their response, accusing some teachers of attempting to censor the paper. Teachers were quick to back up their e-mails.

“The imagery and level of rhetoric felt very dangerous to us,” Critical Media and Cultural Studies Department Chair Lisa Tillmann said. “We were worried that it might feed into violence.”

Tillmann called for the school to have more funding for journalism education to prevent problems in the future, a sentiment shared by many in the audience.

Staff criticized

But much of the initial discourse centered on the decisions made by the staff of The Sandspur.

Rollins Professor of Graduate Studies in Counseling Kathryn Norsworthy echoed many statements in railing against the political cartoon that posted alongside the column, depicting a white man in his underwear standing over an alien lounging in front of a TV at night.

“This rhetoric and the imagery, a white man standing over an insect-like alien, reminds me of the imagery used historically to dehumanize and ultimately ‘exterminate’ or perpetrate violence on marginalized groups,” Norsworthy wrote.

In a crowded auditorium Thursday, comments flew about whether the column was offensive, whether it transcended the first amendment and why Rollins allows its students to publish a newspaper when it has no formal journalism program.

English major Alex Ruiz, a son of illegal Mexican immigrants and self-described “anchor baby,” railed against many of the speakers.

“I probably have as much reason to be as angry as anyone,” Ruiz said. “It said I shouldn’t be a citizen. Welcome to the real world. Yes, it was poorly written; yes, it was poorly researched, but it was an opinion piece. It is one person’s opinion. They have a right to that opinion.”

The discussion was cut short by Sandspur adviser Emily Russell, though educators and students in the audience said the issue was far from resolved.

“I guess the next step is we can talk about content, but how we resolved it was not all that healthy,” student Sam Reiser said.