On March 27, an anonymous journalism student wrote a very obscene column in The Lantern, a student newspaper at Ohio State University, titled “Going Down with the Catholics.” Her remarks included a smear regarding the Immaculate Conception
Though The Lantern receives no money from the university, it is afforded a place on the campus, and is therefore subsidized by Ohio taxpayers. That is why we contacted Dr. Karen Holbrook, president of Ohio State, asking her to treat this incident the way she addressed a comical, yet racist, matter last year. About a year ago, several students at a branch campus sent racist letters to some blacks on the Wooster campus. “If they were intended to be funny,” said Dr. Holbrook, “there was nothing funny about them.”
President Holbrook wrote to us agreeing that the writer was “offensive,” but that the column represented “the view of one student and in my opinion is not characteristic of the overall feelings and actions of Ohio State’s student body.”
