New York college newspaper retracts article for quoting too many white students

The editorial board for The Miscellany News, Vassar College's student newspaper, issued the retraction on Wednesday, on a piece centered around former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson's withdrawal from giving a commencement speech this year. Johnson had reportedly decided against speaking after he received campus pushback on his border deportation policies.

The editorial board stated in the apology that they originally published the article with the intention of documenting student responses to Johnson's nomination, but during the editing process for the student paper, they received Johnson's withdrawal statement and changed the focus of the Feb. 17 article to talking about his withdrawal with some reaction from the student body.

"In this article, we attempted to include a variety of quotes from students describing why there was protest to the announcement of him as speaker in the first place, and the students’ reaction to his withdrawal," they wrote.

It was in this process that the editorial board said they prioritized "urgency over thoroughness," and said they made "misguided and insensitive oversights with whom we were representing in the article and failed to provide in-depth reporting of the issue at large."

"The majority of our quotations came from white students and therefore we reduced the positions of students of color to a singular, tokenized perspective. After this was brought to our attention, the paper decided to remove the article online in an attempt to prevent further harm among the communities we misrepresented," they wrote.

They continued on to state that "misrepresentation" was not the only issue with the article, and "to state so would be a grievous oversimplification."

"Our article exemplifies many of the institutional flaws and structural problems within our paper. Journalism, including college journalism, has historically been a white-centric, often elitist field, and The Miscellany News is not immune to the consequences of these structures," they said.

"The publication of the article and its subsequent removal reminds us of the systemic issues our members are implicated in, as well as the privilege and lack of diversity that we have allowed to persist for generations across our boards. None of our explanations for the failures of an individual article can mitigate the problem of past coverage on issues related to people of color, nor address in full depth the issue of representation within our board," they added.

The board said that "consistency action" must be taken to address "systemic problems" within their paper, and that one of these steps includes their current process of making a review board "that aims to examine quotes and sources to ensure both their veracity and the integrity of their representation within the article."

The board continued on to note why their statement took over a month to come out. "Finally, we would like to acknowledge the delay in releasing this editorial; we wanted to address the issue with the diligence that it demands, rather than release a swift but reactionary apology that does not cover the gravity or complexity of the situation," the editors said.

"As a college newspaper, we want to emphasize that though we are committed to covering news of the Vassar community and campus, our main priority will always be to report all student voices to the best of our ability. We encourage students, including The Miscellany News Editorial Board, to partake in the dialogue regarding the issues at hand, as well as any future articles, topics or disputes on campus. We continue to push towards our goal of providing all of the most important news on campus while uplifting a diverse array of voices," they concluded.