New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait called liberal speech on campuses a “war on the liberal mind.” Conservatives frequently decry “snowflake liberals” on our college campuses. President Trump threatened to cut off federal funding to the University of California, Berkeley, over its alleged suppression of conservative speech. Here at Princeton, some go so far as to allege that the University has become a haven of left-wing groupthink. For its part, the left seems like it will tear itself apart over ideological differences — just look at the Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West feud, or the continued battles in the Democratic Party between the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton wings.
From time to time, even we editors at the ‘Prince’ come under fire for perceived liberal bias, such as suppressing speech from a previous iteration of our Editorial Board, individual guest contributors, and others. Inevitably, our columnists end up offending some people with their writing, regardless of our best efforts to stamp out conservative speech as the P.C. police. Clearly, we snowflakes aren’t cut out to handle the burdens of free speech.
If we publish more liberal columns, then the conservatives cry foul about the suppression of their speech. If we publish more conservative columns, then we’re accused of having shut out and suppressed liberal speech. We clearly can’t have it both ways.
In our rapidly changing media landscape, we at The Daily Princetonian are forced to implement creative solutions to vexing policy problems. Our ultimate responsibility, as one of the oldest college dailies, is to serve you, the public, to present a digital-first, innovative news product. We live in a brave new world for political discourse in America. If a man can sue Google for alleged discrimination against white, conservative men, then anything is possible.
There’s only one solution to this conundrum — from here on out, we will have no more opinions on the 'Prince' opinion page.
Speech is canceled. Using the authority vested in me as Head Opinion Editor, I will simply suppress all speech. All columns will be rejected. Any guest submissions will go immediately into the trash. The Editorial Board is disbanded entirely, with individual writers given the option to write for Breitbart instead. Paper copies of the paper will be pulped and made into sustainably-sourced, vegan, and cruelty-free beds for squirrels. For fear of offending people with our cartoons, our cartoon section will be disbanded too.
Think about it. This way, there will be no more columns about USG, the Honor Code, or kale. No longer will you have to read through the somewhat-meta-but-still-blissfully-unaware-that-they-were-given-a-platform-anyway screeds about the suppression of conservative speech. If we no longer print columns, then you don’t have to worry about reading alternative facts, either. We can all live in blissful ignorance about goings-on at our campus.
What will we do without our precious free and civil discourse? Take a break from the heated debates that rage on Facebook about our section. Go outside. See the world. Read a book or two. If I can’t have free speech, then no one can.
Nicholas Wu is a senior in the Wilson School from Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich. He is the Head Opinion Editor and can be reached at nmwu@princeton.edu.
This article is part of The Daily Princetonian’s annual joke issue. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!
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