Marquette Warrior: Student Government Legislator Speaks Against “Domestic Partner” Benefits, Vilified in Tribune Headline

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Student Government Legislator Speaks Against “Domestic Partner” Benefits, Vilified in Tribune Headline

Warning: Obscene language

Often the biases of media people show in their reporting. But they typically make at least an effort to conceal them.

But sometimes an unguarded comment, an e-mail not intended to be widely seen, or a technical glitch can show exactly what they really believe.

Thus when Marquette Tribune writer Eric Lombardi wrote a story about a meeting of Marquette University Student Government, he apparently didn’t like the fact that a Business Senator named Scott Seramur spoke against a measure to give gay and lesbian employees “domestic partner” benefits.

When Lombardi write the story he also wrote a headline that said “Scott Seramur proves how much of an official fucknut he really is.” A subhead said: “Heather’s roommate exclaims ‘See Marquette DOES hate gays.’”

Katie Wycklendt at GOP3.COM found it online, and archived a copy.

Lombardi obviously didn’t expect the headline and subhead to appear online. Normally, three different editors at the Tribune would have looked at the article, and doubtless caught the headline and subhead.

Tribune Editor in Chief Ryan Nilsson, reached for comment today, blamed the version that appeared online on a software glitch. The Tribune uses College Publisher, which should require that one box labeled “Completed” and another labeled “Approved” be checked before an article can appear online.

In this case, neither box was checked, but the article appeared online anyway.

By about 11:00 p.m. last night, shortly after the article appeared, Diana Sroka (editor of The Warrior) notified Tim Horneman (the Tribune editor who was on duty) about the headline, and Horneman took it down.

Nilsson said that the whole episode “an error” that showed “poor judgment on the part of the writer [Lombardi].” And further, “we regret the error.” Nilsson told Lombardi to send an apology to Seramur, and Nilsson himself tried to reach Seramur by phone to offer an apology.

This episode is a classic example of the intolerance and bigotry directed at people on college campuses who oppose the agenda of the gay lobby. We have blogged before about the fact that Jessica Cushion, President of the Gay/Straight Alliance, claimed that speakers opposed to gay marriage should not be allowed on the Marquette campus, since such advocacy is “hate speech.”

And here we have a Tribune reporter who uses an obscenity to describe a student legislator who won’t support the gay agenda, and accuses him of “hating gays.”

Sometimes, technical glitches reveal the ugly truth.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear Reader,

Let it be known, that I, Scott Michael Seramur, am not against providing domestic partnership benefits, or for that matter, equal rights in any form. However, what I am against is the continual increases in tuition costs, to the student. My rationale for questioning the legislation for providing domestic partnership benefits is not unlike the questioning, which preceded it, where I questioned legislation to increase financial aide to students. I questioned both of the aforementioned items, because I thought each of the items would be directly affecting the rate of tuition. Additionally, I thought and still think that an increase in tuition is not in the student’s best interest. What questions do you have? You are encouraged to contact me at, scott.seramur@mu.edu with any and all of your questions. Thank you for your time.

Very truly yours,
Scott Michael Seramur

2:13 PM  

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