Socialist Student Fired From Campus Journal

by Christine Marie / May 2009

NEW BRITAIN, Conn.—An important free-speech fight is gathering strength around the case of Marissa Blaszko, a member of Youth for Socialist Action. Blaszko was fired March 10 from her position as opinion editor on the Central Connecticut State University student newspaper, the Recorder.

Blaszko’s victimization comes at a time when some commentators have pointed to the growth of a "new McCarthyism" on our college campuses. The chief editor fired Blaszko after she refused the paper’s demand that she drop her membership in Youth for Socialist Action and give up her right to sign petitions or attend antiwar events on campus.

Her fight for re-instatement has made news on TV, radio, and newspapers nationwide. Several student newspapers in the U.S. and Canada have printed editorials in Blaszko's defense, while key student organizations have rallied to her cause.

On April 15, Central Connecticut State student leaders from Pride, Wambli Tokoda (the Indigenous Peoples Club), the Muslim Student Association, Off-Center magazine, the Latin American Students Organization, the Progressive Student Alliance, and the campus radio station joined Peter Goselin of the National Lawyers Guild and several professors in a press conference to call for the reinstatement of Blaszko.

The Veterans Appreciation Group sent a written statement. Mathematics Professor Tim Craine told the press that the current economic crisis made free speech for Central's hard working students more important than ever before. Professor Betsy Kaminsky saluted Blaszko's effort to make the paper more responsive to the interests of the diverse student population at Central. Thirty-two other professors and over a hundred additional students signed a petition protesting Blaszko's dismissal.

Eight media outlets carried the story, and soon Blaszko began receiving messages of support from campus journalists from as far away as Canada. The University of Hartford and University of Connecticut student newspapers wrote editorials in her defense. Melissa O'Brien, chief editor of the University of Hartford student newspaper, said, "Everyone, including editors of a newspaper, has the right to express their views and shouldn’t be punished for participating in campus activism."

James Burrows, co-editor in chief of Arthur, Trent University’s student press in Peterborough, Ontario, critiqued the ethics code used as a pretext in Blaszko's firing. The ethics code adopted by the CCSU Recorder, he pointed out, is borrowed from The New York Times and is "designed to appeal to advertisers and those in power." The immediate response from Burrows and others suggests that campus journalists are undergoing some rough times.

Behind the “ethics” code

Blaszko was fired, according to the editor-in-chief of The Recorder, because she violated an ethics code adopted several years ago by the student newspaper. Large portions of the code were taken from policy written for the big newspapers and National Public Radio, organizations whose editors regularly lunch with the nation's elite and whose sponsors do not want their brand name sullied by association with opposition to the status quo.

The Recorder's code, for example, explicitly approves of mainstream political activity by its staff but explicitly forbids political expression that cannot be limited to the voting booth. Members of the newspaper, they say, have the right to vote in local, state, national, and campus elections, but public "displays of political bias that must be avoided include campaigning, endorsing and protesting."

Until the Blaszko case burst the bubble, most professors and students on campus were unaware of this ethics code or passively in favor of it. The journalism department defended the policy as part of a process of "professionalizing" the student newspaper and training their students to function in the "real world."

The deepening corporatization of U.S. universities has made this kind of utilitarian outlook dominant even in many humanities departments. Those who in the past might have urged their students to challenge the mediocrity of the corporate world now feel obligated to train adaptation to it.

The effect has been to give an academic imprimatur to the worst aspects of the world of contemporary journalism. According to a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Columbia Journalism Review, 41 percent of professional journalists admit they "softened" or "reshaped" stories out of fear for their jobs.

Twenty-five percent of professional journalists have avoided pursuing newsworthy stories for the same reason. Thirty percent of professional journalists believe that stories are ignored because they might conflict with the financial interest of their owners or advertisers.

The horrendous results have included public ignorance about the motivations for an illegal war in Iraq and a disempowering media silence about the impending collapse of the financial sector. At CCSU, just as in the corporate world, an ethics code was used to attempt to silence or coerce opposition to the status quo.

New McCarthyism

Middle Eastern experts such as Norman Finkelstein and Joseph Massad, and Professors Joel Kovel and William Robinson, are just four of the more well known of the recent victims of university administrations that have been willing to dismiss or punish faculty members openly opposed to U.S. government policy on the Palestinian question.

The number of students who are being discriminated against in these campaigns is not yet documented. Not surprisingly, however, support for Palestinian self-determination played a role in Blaszko's dismissal. Just before she was fired, Blaszko was approached by editors who told her that they "had heard" about her participation in the national demonstrations against the siege of Gaza.

Another complaint leveled by the editor-in-chief against Blaszko was her attention to labor issues. A Blaszko editorial defending the faculty union, the AAUP, and urging them to involve students in protesting the impending budget cuts, was rejected because it did not really "benefit" the students. This reaction by The Recorder staff, an attitude shaped over time by the goal of professionalism as defined by the journalism department, gives us some hint about the stakes in this fight.

The state is now increasing tuition and freezing hiring—with the effect of increasing class sizes, instructor loads, and the time it takes to graduate. This will dramatically increase the economic burden on 10,000 students who attend CCSU, who are by and large from working-class families. Many are the first generation to attend college.

A large percentage of students live with their parents and need to work full time while attempting to earn a degree. It is thought that one in six Connecticut residents are now unemployed or underemployed.

The new McCarthyism, which has so far focused mainly on those questioning U.S. policy in the Middle East, is likely being used to establish precedents that could used, in time, against those active in all the movements for social justice. The current relatively low level of understanding of the politics of Israel/Palestine among the U.S. population has prevented massive opposition to some truly horrible academic purges.

When working people begin to mobilize in their own defense in response to the economic reordering underway, these precedents will be available to those who hope to prevent the campus from using their resources in solidarity with those mobilizations. An injury to one is truly an injury to all.

YSA and the fight for free speech

The fight to reinstate Blaszko and democratize the functioning of The Recorder is critical in the struggle to maintain free speech in education. The forces of discrimination have been very clear and direct in their language and motivations; a defeat for Blaszko would make it more difficult for socialists and other activists to defend their activity on any number of campuses. A victory, on the other hand, would be an important step toward ensuring that large numbers of students can engage with the ideas that animate Blaszko.

At a Youth for Socialist Action forum on April 29, Blaszko passionately explained her commitments. Describing her first encounter with socialists, which began last summer on a bus to the National Assembly to End the Iraq War conference in Cleveland, Ohio, she said, "That summer, my view of what ‘politics’ meant was exploded. I realized that talking about the GOP's latest scandal or the victory of the Democratic Party majority wasn't what mattered to students like me.

“Politics, for the first time, meant taking action to defend our rights ourselves. It meant creating our own antiwar congress; it meant mobilizing immigrant workers for a May Day national strike, or flooding the streets in defense of the Palestinian people. It meant taking action in our own interest.

“To get involved in the campaign to defend Blaszko, please sign the petition available at http://freespeechcentral.wordpress.com or e-mail the Connecticut Youth for Socialist Action activists at the addresses listed on the website.