U. of Wash. Humor Publication In Hot Water for Prison Piece - University of Washington student newspaper publishes offensive article - Brief Article

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 22, 2000

SEATTLE -- Top officials and minority students at the University of Washington are angry over a made-up story that appeared in the student humor publication, The Mutt.

The article, published last month, says the university will meet its diversity goals by recruiting Black prison inmates under a new outreach program.

The article said one "Bubbha Buthlter" entered the university eight weeks after his release from Washington State Penitentiary and was awaiting the transfer of six of his former prison colleagues. Under the new program, the article said, the inmates must sign a behavioral contract with their parole officers before stepping onto the university's campus.

"It's an outrageous, offensive, racist and homophobic piece," says Dr. Richard McCormick, the university's president. "I have seen miserable things in The Daily (student newspaper) before, but this is the worst. It is so blatantly racist and so offensive in every way."

The Mutt is a separate publication from The Daily but is distributed inside it.

Tyrone Porter, a bioengineering doctoral student who is involved in minority recruitment at the university, was one of two students who expressed anger over the article at a Board of Regents meeting last month.

"That was the only question I had in the meeting: `Why?'" Porter says. "It's the same question that was asked in the '60s, the same question that was asked in the '70s, it's the same question that's been asked through the decades."

Jason Sykes, editor in chief of The Mutt, says he saw the article as a parody of those who think the only point of an outreach program is to recruit underqualified minorities.

But, he says, "Reading it again, after I heard that there were complaints about it, I realized I was reading between the lines to get the point of the parody."

Sykes said he would write an open letter to The Daily, to apologize. McCormick and the board planned to draft letters condemning the story.

The timing of the article could not be worse for the university's efforts to boost minority enrollment, which fell abruptly after the passage of Initiative 200 outlawed the use of affirmative action in admissions.

"During a year when we've been working so hard to expand dais university's outreach to young men and women of color to recruit them to the university, to have something like this happen is so incredibly damaging," McCormick says.