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As a conservative student at Oxy, I have become used to being in the minority. I have come to terms with the fact that most students on campus will never see things the way I do, and I have accepted this as one of the defining characteristics of a school that I love.
For three years I have read the Oxy Weekly, and while I have occasionally been disappointed by the liberal lean of most of the politically-focused articles, I have always appreciated that in most cases, the articles were kept clean, civil, and generally well-informed. However, I am ashamed and disgusted that any “journalistic” organization would allow Dean DeChiaro’s piece on the tax-day TEA Parties to be published, even under the guise of an “opinions” piece.
DeChiaro’s dismissal of all those involved in the parties as “greedy, grimy, pathetic idiots” was not only immature and biased, but also completely inappropriate. He antagonizes the participants by citing a minority of protestors who carried banners with distasteful slogans or images, and while I will be the first to admit these signs were inappropriate and were demeaning to the cause, it hardly seems fair that the few choosing to carry these items are used to represent the entire assembly.
Additionally, while his claims that the parties were forums for the rich to complain about tax increases might have been true for some attendees, he completely ignored the larger issues. These TEA parties were not primarily focused on tax cuts, but at drawing attention to the largest government spending spree our country has ever seen. While I am not denying that a fiscal stimulus would be beneficial in an economy such as our own, the Obama administration is currently on track to borrow more money than every previous administration combined. It is a matter of opinion as to whether you agree with the government’s plans for spending this money, but regardless of politics, it is foolish to ignore the fact that one day, this debt will need to be repaid. The TEA parties were merely trying to illuminate the fact that, in the end, tax increases will not pay the bills if the government continues to spend in in its current manner.
In the future, the Weekly would do well to eliminate such biased and uninformed attempts at journalism. I have accepted Oxy’s liberal bias, but this “article” has completely crossed the line. Not only has it entirely misrepresented the conservative voice at Oxy, but it has also, for the first time, made me truly ashamed to be part of a community where an uninformed and vulgar rant about a little-understood group on campus would be considered appropriate journalistic fare.
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