Berkeley Beacon Crosses a Line
Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way up front. City Council President Mike Ross has blogged for us in the past. He also employs Amy Derjue, who was a staff writer for Boston magazine and Boston Daily.
Ross has pitched legislation that would compel colleges and universities to assist in enforcing the ban on apartment buildings renting out their units to more than four undergraduates. As one might expect, the reaction from the universities has been mixed, and the reaction from the undergrads has been outrage.
That’s fine.
But a sharply-worded editorial in the Berkeley Beacon, Emerson’s independent student-run newspaper, crossed a line.
The editorial begins:
Suppose some Boston city councilor proposed to ban more than four gay people from living together, claiming that such large gatherings of gays was a public nuisance. Or imagine if a councilor proposed such a Gestapo-like imposition on the city’s Jews, or such a nouveau-Jim-Crow decree on Boston’s blacks.
and continues…
If the council president is serious about his cap on coed cohabitation, history provides a number of examples from effective tyrants. For instance, forget forcing colleges to report off-campus students’ addresses. Hitler had Warsaw’s Jews wear armbands for easy identification by the SS. Tattoos were effective, too.
In addition to being way over the top, the editors of the Beacon would be wise to read up on the man they so easily and nonchalantly compared to Hitler.
From Ross’s official website:
Mike is a first-generation American. His father, Stephan Ross, survived 10 concentration camps during the Holocaust, and was rescued by American soldiers at Dachau.
We asked Ross for comment and here it is:
“I am disappointed that anyone would choose to compare a law designed to protect Boston’s neighborhoods from unscrupulous landlords to the actions of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis against the Jews in Europe during World War II in any context. But it’s in especially poor taste given that the my father, Stephan Ross, lost his entire family during the Holocaust. This distracts from the discussion I’d like to have about the law on its merits, which is unfortunate.”
A little perspective please, Beacon?
March 1st, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I go to Emerson, and the Beacon sucks. Big time. No one here cares what they have to say. This is just one more instance of sucktitude that doesn’t deserve a response.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:25 am
I graduated last May from Emerson. Despite no longer being a student there, I am horribly embarrassed by the article that appeared in the Beacon. Mike Ross has visited Emerson to help students learn about good journalism, something the author of this article clearly hasn’t grasped. This being said, I hope this article doesn’t deter Mike Ross from visiting Emerson in the future to offer his valuable input. To the Beacon I say: stop publishing unfounded rants with bogus comparisons that jeopardize the integrity of the school (and Mike Ross for that matter) and start focusing on that which Emerson is known for: journalism.