Irresponsible Journalism

I am a third-year college student, and am running for Vice-President at my school’s Student Government Association. I’m a political science major, and I’ve been involved for a couple of years, so I know how nasty elections can get. However, this really pisses me off. 

For the link-squeamish, I’ll summarize. It’s a blog by the editor of a online campus magazine, who was invited to moderate the debate for all the executive candidates for our yearly election.

In this blog, she is complaining about the lack of attendance at the debate, blames SGA, and launches into a tirade about how much SGA "sucks" and gives us "suggestions" on how to get more students involved.

Those suggestions are to set up tables in various places (one of which is outside the local bars) and hire "attractive" and "popular" people to run the tables, and dress them scantily. Because "sex sells."

This not only implies that current, FEMALE members of the organization are not attractive nor popular enough nor scantily clad enough (and that they should be), but also implies that all blame for lack of student involvement is placed solely on the female members. "Scantily clad" is not a term used to refer to males, not even were they to strip down; it is historically and currently used to refer to the clothing choices of women.

It’s one thing to offer suggestions on how our organization can reach out to more students, past what we already do. It’s ENTIRELY another to throw potshots at the women in our organization, focusing on their sexuality and physical features, and blaming the student apathy on our lack of offering our sexuality in return for involvement.