The Comenian Responds to The Woke Coalition
Photo courtesy of Mark Harris.
In a March 22 post to its Instagram page, The Woke Coalition accused The Comenian of “attempt[ing] to silence marginalized voices” because we “refused to publish [the] article” they submitted to us.
While we welcome all views from the Moravian College community, we must point out some inaccuracies in the Coalition’s post.
The Comenian solicited the article from the Woke Coalition precisely because we wanted marginalized voices to be heard in the paper.
What we have done is what good journalism requires: As editors, we routinely ask writers to clarify and explain their positions. The Woke article was still in the middle of that editorial process, in which editors and writers go back and forth, working to create the strongest work possible. We were preparing additional edits for the writer to consider when Woke made its Instagram post.
To be clear: At no point did we tell the writer we would not publish the article.
We understand that the writer may have felt frustrated at the slow pace of the editorial process. To that we say that we wanted to take care to ensure that the writer’s piece was as strong as it could be, accurately reflecting their view while also clearly explaining that view to the wide readership of the paper.
Our staff also saw in the Woke editorial the need to review our policy for editorial submissions. We felt the need to do this not so much because of the content in the Woke submission, but because of the responses it will likely generate, including those that may be offensive, hurtful, and inaccurate. We wanted our editorial policy to be clear on the kind of content The Comenian will and will not publish. You may read our revised policy here.
One of our goals as the newspaper of the Moravian College student body is to diversify our team of writers and contributors and the content we publish. Everyone — regardless of race, creed, sexuality, and gender identity, among many others — is welcome to participate at The Comenian.
Our meetings this semester are held via Zoom every Wednesday at 5:00 PM. We invite you to join us!
To be added to our email list, please contact us at [email protected].
Sincerely,
The Comenian editors
Shannon Williamson • Jul 17, 2023 at 2:59 pm
Hello:
While a senior at Moravian I co-edited this paper. As an alum I am certainly part of the wider Moravian community. I am not directly responding to the discussion regarding the Woke Coalition, but the editorial decisions around that article do touch on an experience I had with this publication just a few weeks ago.
I responded to the “rant of the week” directed at the HILL dorm circumstances, on which I stumbled because I was looking up the HILL on the net. My son will be a freshman and housed at the HILL this coming school year, I thoughtfully and respectfully posted a response to this “rant”. A “rant”, by the way, is (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) a tirade, impassioned and sometimes a little wild. I lived on South Campus for three of my four years at Moravian, so I had a true ability to reply to the “rant of the week”. My posting was well-written, respectful, and balanced. It contained no personal attacks, or inaccuracies of any sort. In one portion I allowed that it was possible that I was the wrong person to ask about that particular point. I also agreed with portions of the article. And there were points with which I disagreed. And yet my post was removed. The one response to that post that remains is the response that agrees unequivocally with the author’s original “rant”.
This does not strike me as balanced journalism. One, as a journalist, must be willing to deal with opposing view points, particularly if one wishes to rant! I think this is something to take into consideration when allowing someone to post a response. Life is not one continuous validation after another. Sometimes one must fit themselves to circumstances rather than regularly requiring that the circumstances fit themselves to you. And to be truly thoughtful, one must think about someone else’s point of view without dismissing it out of hand.
AJ Minnich • Jul 17, 2023 at 6:18 pm
Hello, thank you for leaving these comments. I am the current editor-in-chief of the Comenian. We never removed or struck down your previous comment (which is now published). Our website is set up so that any comment that is left on our website has to be approved by someone who has editing access to the site. Because of that, the comment won’t show on an article until it’s approved by someone. Your comment didn’t show not because of an editorial decision to silence dissent but because I don’t check the website regularly while we are on break and not publishing new content. The Comenian strives to be open to conversations and different opinions and we would never go against that especially when people were respectful about it like you were. I apologize for any confusion but just know that there wasn’t any ill intent on our end. We don’t get much engagement on our site over the summer so we do not check our comments as often as we do during the semester. Thank you for your input and for your service to the Comenian. Have a great day!