It was recently brought to our attention that in our recent April Fool’s edition entitled “The Deceiver,” two of the calendar events were interpreted by some of our readers as insensitive and triggering. Though we wrote this piece with the intent of criticizing the rape culture that surrounds Greek life and fraternities, we understand that many people were disturbed by how similar our satirical events were to real assaults that have occurred in their lives and on this very campus. For that, we sincerely apologize.
We understand that explaining our initial intentions does not remedy the situation that has risen over the past few days, and for our future publications, we will invest our efforts into producing pieces that truly reflect our commitment to serve the UMBC community.
We want to be able to produce satire that criticizes misogyny, rape culture and toxic masculinity, and there are certain ways to do that without hurting survivors; in the future, we will be more conscientious of who our work affects and how it affects them. We will also continue our work investigating Title IX processes and lifting up the voices of survivors on our campus.
Our journalism has a real impact on this campus, and we are incredibly proud of that. We also acknowledge our responsibility to make the students of this university feel safe, respected and heard. That is and always will be our promise to the campus.
