University Of Alabama Suspends Black-Centered Student Mags
University Of Alabama Suspends Black And Women-Centered Student Magazines
President Donald Trump and the GOP spent much of the 2024 election cycle touting themselves as the “free speech” party. The continual assaults on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs on college campuses have revealed that, believe it or not, they were lying. The latest instance of Republican censorship takes us to good ol’ Alabama, where the University of Alabama informed two student newspapers on Monday that they would be indefinitely suspended due to the Department of Education’s anti-DEI stance.
According to the New York Times, university officials told the editors of Alice, a women’s lifestyle student magazine, and Nineteen Fifty-Six, which is focused on Black culture, that the school could no longer officially support them due in part to a memo released by Attorney General Pam Bondi explaining what “unlawful DEI” practices should be avoided to prevent a lapse in federal funding. Steven Hood, the University of Alabama’s vice president of student life, told students in a Monday meeting that their magazines may have violated that guidance. “You can understand why, as a public institution, we might not be able to support magazines that are based on demographics like these two magazines are,” Hood said in the meeting.
“This requires us to ensure all members of our community feel welcome to participate in programs that receive university funding from the Office of Student Media,” Alex House, a spokeswoman with the university, said in a statement. She added that the university “will never restrict our students’ freedom of expression.”
Well, that’s a lie because the university is literally restricting the freedom of expression for these Black and women students.
“It takes away the students voices to be able to talk about issues that are important to them … It’s very scary to know that we are not allowed to talk about certain things just because of our target audience … As a country, I feel like students should have the right to be able to say, to be able to exist and take up space and talk about our marginalized issues,” Sara Beth Caddell, the web editor for Alice, told WTVM.
Kendal Wright, editor-in-chief of Nineteen Fifty-Six, said she was “devastated but, regrettably, not surprised” by the university’s decision, “based on the current climate of our country,” in a statement released to the Times.
Nineteen Fifty-Six was launched in 2020 by Tionna Tate during the widespread protests surrounding George Floyd’s death. It was named in honor of Autherine Lucy Foster, who became the University of Alabama’s first Black student in 1956.
“While Nineteen Fifty-Six is created to fill a void, it never was created to exclude,” Tate told WVTM 13, “and it doesn’t exclude. When you look at the amount of support that Nineteen Fifty Six has received within the past 24 hours of this decision being made, you’ll see that you have a range of people from different racial backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds and just different walks of life who support Nineteen Fifty Six, who read Nineteen Fifty Six and who want to see Nineteen Fifty Six continue to be successful on campus.”
The University of Alabama had already begun rolling back its DEI initiatives earlier this year, following a law passed by Alabama’s state legislature that prohibits public universities from having dedicated DEI offices and bans the teaching of “divisive concepts relating to race, sex, or religion.”
So, I was coming of age during the whole GamerGate mess that dovetailed into the rise of MAGA. Back when I was a young man with enough time to go back and forth in YouTube comment sections, I remember being told I was “a cuck,” “libtard,” and “sjw” because I held the controversial belief that women, trans, and non-White folks should be treated like people.
The same folks who ridiculed survivors of sexual abuse and trauma for wanting safe spaces where they wouldn’t be triggered are now advocating for their own safe spaces where they don’t have to face such “divisive topics” like the brutality of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the brutality of Jim Crow Laws, or even that women can do more than just be subservient partners.
I’d like to use stronger, more inflammatory words, but for the sake of editorial standards, I’ll just call the Republican Party the weakest, most oversensitive, intellectually challenged, emotionally immature cowards of our current, God forsaken times.
The fact that a student-run women’s lifestyle magazine is considered controversial goes to show how much the GOP has lost the plot. Are they offended anytime they see a copy of Vogue or Essence at the grocery store? While the school said it wants to launch a new magazine that caters to all student identities, I’d bet money that the result will be a publication that features more right-leaning voices at the expense of the Black and women’s voices.
I mean, it’s only what legacy media has been doing for the last year.
SEE ALSO:
Trump Memo Doubles Down On Anti-DEI Requirements For Federal Funding
Northwestern President Resigns Amid Pressure From Trump Administration
UVA President Resigns Over Trump’s Anti-DEI Investigation
George Mason President Refuses To Apologize For DEI
