Bullying through print is still bullying
Jack Farrell
Bullying is an issue which goes largely unnoticed in college. An issue that is apparently consigned to our schooldays, with the mentality being that people surely have matured enough to know when a bit of teasing has gone too far.
I’m afraid that isn’t the case. This is an issue which surveys show that over 80% of college students have dealt with, and it appears as if it is one of those issues that colleges fail to deal with. When the welfare office launches a new initiative it is always to do with the issue of the day, using buzzwords like “depression”.
It is necessary however to disaggregate these issues further and deal with the fundamental causes of things like “depression” such as bullying or stress. The reason for my sudden urge to write about such a topic was spurred on by the SU election special of The Piranha. Renowned for being a newspaper that pokes fun at people in the college community, I always looked forward to a new edition.
This time, however, The Piranha crossed the realm of humour and into that of bad taste, singling out a candidate and then carrying out a disgusting character assault in the name of good fun. When I left secondary school I thought I was escaping a world were bullying was the norm. People arrive in college from a variety of backgrounds and tolerance becomes second nature as we become immersed in a melting pot. For a college publication to gently tease all other candidates and single out one is fundamentally wrong. Having spoken to many about the issue they all feel it would have been fine had the profiles of the other candidates been handled with the same ruthlessness.
Freedom of the Press is one of the cornerstones of democracy and it is not one that should be abused in such a fashion, for incidents like this are what create greater issues within society, and not to sound melodramatic but it is very easy to draw parallels with any authoritarian regime. We can’t sit back and let issues like this go unnoticed, passing it off as “just a laugh” isn’t good enough. This is an issue that the SU should deal with and bring about greater awareness. Bullying appears to be ignored in the college community and as a result we all suffer. The SU seeks to be a body representative of the student’s needs and the widespread condemnation that this publication has received is evidence that something needs to be done. I am not trying to argue that The Piranha should no longer be published, but measures need to be taken to ensure that individual victimisation as has such been carried out doesn’t occur in future editions, or indeed any college publication. Every single person in college has their own story, their own trials and tribulations. Some have issues at home, others at work and college provides the ideal means for escapism.
We all have enough on our plates without needing to fear or dislike coming to college. The issue of bullying should have been put to rest during our school years, by now we should have accumulated the emotional intelligence to recognise the difference between right and wrong; to know when an attempt to gain a few laughs becomes an attempt to belittle another member of the college community. I guess common decency and manners seem like a very basic idea, one which we’ve all heard before but one that seems to be very easily forgotten.
Piranha readers are smart enough to know what to believe
James Hagan
Satirical expression is usually controversial – some would claim that its very nature necessitates that. Despite how offensive satire can be, opponents of censorship claim its role is to call our attention to what society is doing wrong by violating societal norms or that which is considered “decent”. Perhaps the most famous piece of satire is Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay A Modest Proposal. The essay’s thesis is that the children of starving Irish people be sold to rich people to be eaten. By putting forward such an awful proposal Swift hoped to make people think about economic exploitation. His essay is thus held up as an example of noble satire. In this way, satire is seen as useful and worthy despite its ability to offend. Offensive articles which seem to lack this noble aspect are often accused as hiding behind the mask of satire in order to lend a veneer of legitimacy to writing which is nothing more than crude immaturity. Debate over this issue can leave participants struggling to define what satire truly is and what should be “allowed” to be printed. It is my opinion that the difficulty and inevitable bias involved in deciding what is worthy means that almost everything should be acceptable as publishable content under law.
Recently, Trinity’s satirical paper The Piranha attracted negative attention for its coverage of the SU sabbatical elections. It provoked outrage for seemingly singling one of the candidates out for much harsher treatment than the others. Most of the sabbatical candidates became victims of the typical strategy of absurdity favoured by the paper, including education office-seeker John Cooney being portrayed as a secret superhero. However, former presidential hopeful Sebastien LeCocq seemed to come in for a much more personal attack, rather than being used as an excuse to front an article of irrelevant absurdity for comic effect like the others. As well as portraying LeCocq as a masochistic pariah for running in the election, The Piranha also seemed to disclose a medical condition of LeCocq’s. This reference is widely regarded as extremely distasteful and unnecessary. The publication’s editor, John Engle, has been reported to the Junior Dean for his treatment of LeCocq. Opinion on whether Engle should be punished by college authorities for his publication’s content is divided: some claim that he committed an act of character assassination and must face consequences, others that, while LeCocq’s profile was unjust, freedom must be allowed for subversion in print even if it is sometimes at the cost of good taste. I fall in to the latter category.
As much as I find the treatment of LeCocq upsetting, I still defend The Piranha’s right to do it. It is my belief that in any free society people should have the right to publish what they want to. The Piranha markets itself as a satirical magazine. Leaving aside the ambiguity which this definition engenders, it is safe to say that it is a publication which does not represent itself as being a source of factual truth and claims no pretensions of journalistic integrity. As such, there is no deception of its audience. This type of publication is an “anything goes” forum, from which the conclusions readers draw (if any) must be heavily tempered by the knowledge that its content may be meaningless. In my view, such a publication must be allowed to continue uncensored and with its contributors untouched by lawful punishment (I think that if we are to take Trinity as a microcosm of society, reprimand from the Junior Dean is fairly equivalent to punishment by law).
Papers like The Piranha often end up spewing forth unwarranted nastiness, yes, yet they are one of the few types of spaces where dissatisfaction with fundamental evils in society, which can go unnoticed without the existence of subversive elements, can be expressed powerfully. Ultimately, we should be able to think for ourselves, to pick out the parts of a marginal, controversial publication like The Piranha which seem wrong to us and to voice our disapproval of such ideas, but we should also value it as a potential agent in better informing our views. Recourse to law in order to punish the individuals responsible for publishing that which offends should not be necessary- whether we consider those individuals’ actions to be brave or disgusting. The response to the LeCocq article demonstrates that students of this college have the ability to know something rotten when they see it and there is widespread indignation on his behalf throughout college. Why scare those who may have other controversial, but perhaps necessary, content to share with the power of the Junior Dean as well as public scorn? An incident which I feel further strengthens my point is The Piranha’s connection to another controversy regarding the elections.
The facebook page “RON # 1 Trinity SU President”, which urged students to vote to re-open nominations instead of voting for the sole remaining canidiate, Ryan Bartlett, was created under a fake “Trinity Piranha” account. Engle posted on the page denying any connection to it, helpfully clearing up any difficult confusions one might have regarding the complex nature of satire when he stated that “satire is funny because it is not real, but merely a facade of reality. When one steps into the realm of genuine political campaign the point of the publication is lost.” He signed off his post with the sentence “Close this shit down”. This proves that freedom is a two-way street. Engle, who campaigned for Bartlett during the election, has the freedom to print what he wants in a self-professed satirical magazine, but, equally, anyone can use his publication’s name for their own purposes in the chaotic environment of the internet. It is my belief that if a large amount of freedom is given to everyone to print what they want and individuals are intelligent and tenacious enough to draw their own conclusions (and if they are not, we as a society have much bigger problems), the rest will take care of itself. It is detrimental to introduce rule-based punishment in cases such as this.
