By Nick Bond
I love Hofstra. As the days dwindle down to graduation, I think of all the things that have happened to this school, from the debate last October to the University’s medical school, and I feel more and more grateful for the education I’ve received and people I’ve met along the way.
With that said, there is one thing about Hofstra that makes me so angry that sometimes I wonder why I went to this school at all, and that is the almost pathological inability for anyone on this campus to take a joke.
As many of you are aware-especially if you are the type of person who would be reading this page-we had ourselves a particularly controversial issue this past week. From the front page, which featured an expertly reported article by the Chronicle’s own prodigal son, Samuel Elliot Rubenfeld, to our center spread, exquisitely drawn by Francoise Van Keuren-and colored by Ryan Broderick–to the proverbial icing on an exceedingly delicious cake, an advertising insert created by the fine folks, and noted friends of the Chronicle, Nonsense (“Hofstra’s Only Intentional Humor Magazine”), last week’s Chronicle was one of the most jam-packed issues we’ve run since the year started.
In response to, what I believe to be, one of our best issues of the semester, we received a cavalcade of complaints, a disparate collection of accusations that ranged from claims of shoddy reporting to attacking members of SGA to a deliberate attempting at misleading our readers. The issue was without a doubt one of the most provocative ones since I’ve been on the paper, which in most cases would be something I would wear as a badge of honor. But instead, because of the ridiculous motives and reasoning behind these complaints, it ended up being one of the most depressing things I’ve dealt with here at Hofstra.
Firstly, instead of complimenting Sam on what was an exceedingly difficult story to report, members of SGA complained not only about how he wrote the story but the manner in which he gathered his information. Sam – who has been making this University proud as an intern at The Hill, a non-partisan paper which serves members of Congress – reported and wrote the story as a favor to members of the news section, despite having only been in town for a few days following the completion of his internship. Now some SGA members may say that means that he shouldn’t have written the article in the first place.
Those SGA members would be idiots.
Sam is considered by most who have seen him to be as one of the finest reporters in recent Chronicle history. Even if he weren’t, the idea that Sam would compromise his journalistic integrity to “get” those in SGA is literally the most ridiculous and self-important thing I have ever heard. To think that Sam really cares about taking down SGA, that he would be willing to tarnish his name for some petty vendetta against SGA senators gets to the very essence of the issues that plague the SGA year after year.
The self-agrandisment and obliviousness to the reality of their insignificance aside, it is the cloak-and-dagger manner in which they approach everything they do, including but not limited to senators stealing vans and driving them to the city, closed budget process (ones they shouldn’t even be in control of considering the completely obvious conflict of interest inherent in dolling out money to clubs one happens to be on or dislike), and in the case, the defiling of the office of the President because they were upset about losing an election.
That’s right, in response to losing an SGA ELECTION, the losing party decided to use the access granted to them by virtue of being VICE PRESIDENT to defile the office. Thank God that such mature individuals run SGA, because Lord knows where the school would be with out their guidance. Which, of course leads me to my next point, the controversy over the centerfold.
The centerfold, which portrayed the SGA senate in their natural state, as unsupervised babies without pacifiers — though I suppose they do have pacifiers, in the form of poorly planned out power plays and their ever-present sense of self importance — was another part of the paper of which SGA did not approve. I don’t have much to say about that, as I feel that the editorial cartoon speaks for itself, though I do have one piece of advice for SGA: if you want to not be depicted as babies, STOP ACTING LIKE THEM.
Which brings me to the final nail in the Hofstra coffin, the complaints that piled up in our inbox about our advertising insert of the Nonsense HUMOR magazine. Perhaps my favorite — or I suppose least favorite — complaint was that students were unable to discern between the actual newspaper and the Nonicle, the moniker given to that issue of Nonsense. How this is possible is truly incomprehensible to me, because beyond the obvious tactile similarity, the two publications had literally nothing in common. Not only was every page clearly marked as both an advertisement and The Nonicle, staff bylines such as Chandler Claxton, Shoes Editor, reside under such outlandish headlines as “New Bran of Cereal Racism Plagues Campus” and “Post-shooting Popeye’s attracts tourists, thrill-seekers.” There is absolutely no reason, not one, why any person could logically think that there was any attempt to mislead our readership with a fake newspaper. Anyone that thought this should probably reconsider enrollment in the University, as such a thought process is probably indicative of idiocy at best and severe mental disturbance at worst.
As a matter of fact, if you had a problem with any of things I just talked about, for any of the reasons I just mentioned, this is a course of action I strongly recommend.