Tufts magazine under fire after racial joke runs awry

David Pomerantz

A satirical Christmas carol mocking black students and affirmative action has led to student outrage, administrative disgust and a mountain of embarrassing publicity for Tufts University since its publication in a campus magazine earlier this month.

The carol, entitled “O Come All Ye Black Folk,” was published in the Dec. 6 edition of The Primary Source, which bills itself as “Tufts’ Journal of Conservative Thought.” The Tufts student government uses tuition money to provide the magazine’s $21,000 annual budget, leading some members of the student body to call on the university to reduce the publication’s budget. Others have called that course of action censorship.

Intended to parody Tufts’ affirmative action policy, the song included racially charged lyrics such as, “Born into the ghetto. O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas,” and “No matter what your grades are, F’s, D’s or G’s, give them all privileged status.”

Tufts’ student government hosted an open forum to discuss the carol on Dec. 10, where Primary Source Editor-in-Chief Alison Hoover issued an apology, saying “it is not the opinion of The Primary Source that there are no qualified black students at Tufts University or that any of the other generalizations in the song are true.”

A subsequent Source press release said the carol “was intended as a satirical criticism of affirmative action and was, in fact, intended as an anti-racist statement.”

Tufts’ senior administrators denounced the carol on Dec. 11, and University President Lawrence Bacow issued a personal condemnation a week later.

Students have found time in between exams to mobilize on the Medford campus of 4,900 undergraduates. Over 150 concerned students, most of whom were black, met on Dec. 12 and over 200 students, faculty and administrators held an outdoor “Rally for Unity” gathering on Saturday.

Another student group, the Pan-African Alliance, is circulating a petition to ask the Student Senate’s nine-member allocations board to consider “reprioritizing” The Primary Source’s funding. Senate President Mitch Robinson said that if 2,500 students — or more than half of the university’s enrollment — were to sign the petition, the Senate would listen closely.

“As one vote, I would definitely take it into consideration,” Robinson said.

Most students and administrators, however, say that they would not want to see the Source censored or defunded, foreseeing a nasty freedom of speech debate that would almost certainly develop.

“I want to be clear that we believe that it would be playing into their hands — anything that can be construed as inhibiting speech would hand them a victory,” University Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha said.

Bharucha did say, however, that any move by the Senate to reduce the Source’s funding “would be a student decision” that the administration would respect.

The controversy at Tufts is part of a recent trend of conservative campus groups using tactics that student majorities and college administrations have denounced as racist.

The Boston University College Republicans recently announced a white-only scholarship in an effort to criticize that school’s affirmative action policy, a move that was applauded in the Nov. 6 edition of The Primary Source.

In New Hampshire, editors of the conservative paper The Dartmouth Review drew criticism for a cover illustration of an American Indian holding a scalp under the headline, “The natives are getting restless.”

The Associated Press reported on the Tufts controversy last week, sending news of the university’s racial roiling to newspapers around the country and websites across the blogosphere.

The bad press came at the worst possible time for Tufts Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin, who is trying to increase the school’s diversity profile after a dismal year in which only 52 black freshmen enrolled in the University. That number, which accounts for only 4 percent of the incoming class, is down from the 6 to 7 percent that Tufts has enrolled annually over the past several years.

“Three kids have already canceled their admissions interviews,” Coffin said. “A real concern is that this could depress our black applicant pool.”

“You can not take the malicious comments of a small group of people and misconstrue them as the truth,” he added.

Coffin spoke for the administration at Saturday’s rally, defending Tufts’ affirmative action policy while flanked by his admissions officers.

“The integrity of our undergraduate admissions process has been impugned. People are outraged, and rightly so … and for better or worse, the nation is watching us,” Coffin said.

Coffin defended the school’s affirmative action policy, saying that race is one of many factors used in the admissions process.

“In 2006 in the United States, such practices are legal, they are germane, and they are legitimate,” Coffin said.

At times, he addressed black students specifically, emphasizing that they were as qualified as any other Tufts student.

“You are understandably hurt, and I hope not irreparably,” he said. “You earned your admission to Tufts. You are safe here, you are welcome here. Do not ever doubt that.”

As for The Primary Source, it received an e-mail last week condemning the carol — from the alum that founded the publication in 1982. The magazine’s first issue next semester will be devoted entirely to affirmative action, though Primary Source assistant editor and Tufts Republicans President Jordan Greene said the editorial board will forgo any attempts at humor.

“If people don’t understand satire, we’ll give it to them straight,” Greene said.