The editors then discuss the recent actions taken by students in Britain over plans to increase their tuition dramatically, actions that have polarized the nation through truly revolutionary student mass actions and coordinated efforts of civil disobedience and civil unrest.

These students have taken to the streets in a radical effort to reclaim governmental representation in an age where students are degraded and disregarded. They have asserted their right to quality and affordable education while they too experience economic catastrophe.

Ironically, The State News largely ignores the efforts and actions of student activist groups in its “call to action” editorial. This particularly is strange considering that these groups often seem to be the editorial board’s favorite punching bag.

While promoting mass action in Britain, The State News continually seeks to smash action on campus, whether by misrepresenting activists, activist organizations and campaign objectives or by urging student “restraint” and “compromise” with MSU.

Seemingly far removed from MSU activist circles, the editorial board repeatedly misrepresents activists and their aims (either through their own journalistic ignorance or purposefully to suit their objectives) in order to craft a false “straw man” that it easily can blow over through shallow analysis and clichéd logic.

In another editorial published last month entitled “Coalition’s demands should be met, reasonably” (SN 11/22), The State News editorial board snidely patronizes members of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence and portions of the Coalition’s list of demands that it presented to members of the MSU administration and that, according to the editorial board “appears to (adhere to) the rationale that the alleged assailants are guilty of something.”

Hmm, I wonder what campus anti-rape activists could believe these “alleged assailants” are guilty of?

The editorial continues, “This assumption is based, unfortunately, on emotion. Legally, nothing has happened.”

(How many women have been assaulted or victimized on this campus or elsewhere and have had that very same assertion hurled at them, packed with the same venomous arrogance and disdain, “You’re being too emotional!”)

Continuing on, “The coalition seems to be calling on MSU to completely disregard student rights in the name of what it perceives to be ‘justice.’” Ah, “student’s rights,” a lovely cliché often bandied about by both the MSU administration and its mouthpieces at The State News.

What about the “rights” of women at MSU to not be raped, harassed and assaulted? How quick we jump up to defend the “alleged assailants” and blame the survivor, as if she could have willed the Ingham County Prosecutor to press charges.

Her rights to due process and justice were snatched away by the prosecutor’s office without so much as a peep from The State News editorial board which now rushes in to the “alleged assailants’” defense like the big brother to tell ‘lil sis she is “being too emotional.”

If the editorial board truly wanted to see renewed campus activism, they would first and foremost represent student perspectives rather than the bourgeoisie administrators.

They could acknowledge and support student activists who are putting time, energy and resources into making this campus a more equitable and just place.

Yet, the only true “voice” represented in The State News editorial page is that of the status quo, continually insulating the MSU administration from critique while simultaneously discrediting campus activists through factual distortion and superficial, far-removed observations of deeply rooted systems of inequality and injustice at MSU.

Change is a process that requires support and solidarity from the bottom up. As always, real change again will occur and be spurred on by the dedication and commitment of the grassroots, students and others within the “belly of the beast.”

Mitch Goldsmith is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at goldsm4@msu.edu.