Editor’s Note: The following piece, titled ‘USG announces new Lawnparties headliner, books R. Kelly for final performance before prison’, is viewable here, but will no longer be available directly on our website.
Whether you have read the piece or not, the ‘Prince’ apologizes for the publication of this piece, which was hurtful to many members of our community.
The purpose of the Satire section is to highlight societal flaws and failures through irony, and we recognize that we crossed lines with this piece, specifically in making light of sexualized and racialized violence in a critique of Undergraduate Student Government (USG).
In light of this, we are doing the following: first, we are retracting the text and the accompanying image. Scrubbing the piece entirely from our website damages our accountability and transparency as an organization; ultimately, we chose to publish the piece, and removing it does not rectify the harm the piece caused.
In place of the text, which you may read here, we will leave this extended editor’s note.
Second, we are working to review existing Satire and general publication guidelines to ensure that similar pieces are not published again.
We apologize for the harm this piece has caused, and we will do better in the future.
It is important when you, as readers, hold us accountable. We appreciate your voices thus far, and we continue to invite them as our paper grows.
Thank you.