Disclaimer: This article is published under the Charlatan’s satire section, the Partisan. All quotes and names have been fabricated.
Gone are the days when student newspapers contained some modicum of interesting material. The Charlatan in particular used to be a newspaper rife with controversy: retractions, lawsuits, student politicians ordering and executing a mass heist of our printed papers.
Now, what reverberates is nothing but the soft sounds of boring, safe, to-the-point reporting and opinion sharing.
There are reasons for this, obviously, both legal and moral. But there remains the unresolved tension that comes with having to reject op-eds in particular that just absolutely rip into other students by name, and really aren’t anything more than gossip. In order to provide disgruntled students an opportunity to take their frustrations out on those they wish to confront, I propose that the Charlatan start a fight club to make up for this shortcoming.
During our tenure as the Volume 50 editorial staff, we have suffered greatly. We wanted nothing more than to incite controversy with the op-ed section. We wanted to allow students to ‘spill the tea’ about their fellow Ravens, as they say.
I honestly didn’t even care what it was about. If a student wanted to criticize a student politician’s moral character, I felt compelled to say, “Sure.” If someone else was looking to roast a club executive’s questionable haircut, I wanted to tell them, “Go for it.” Unfortunately, I’ve had to reject each piece that criticizes a specific person (or people) by name if I could not ensure both the writer and the paper could be protected against libel.
While it might be too late now that I only have a week left as op-ed editor, I wish I had realized the best solution for this earlier: letting students just beat the absolute shit out of each other in front of a live audience.
How great would it have been to see students just absolutely go at each other like raccoons in a dumpster fire? A fight club would have allowed student politicians, club executives, ex-lovers, and so on to take all that disdain they have for others and channel it into something that doesn’t put the paper at risk. It holds the potential to bring a whole new kind of drama to the paper—raking in the readers and the ad revenue—perhaps even saving modern print journalism (and increasing our salaries).
You might be thinking: “But Charlatan editors, how would this even work? Couldn’t the paper be held liable if someone got hurt? How could you even guarantee students would be able to beat up those they want to criticize? What if the other party doesn’t participate?”
Yeah, I mean, fair point. I would answer your first question, but that kind of goes with the first rule about fight club(s), right? You don’t talk about fight club(s), therefore, no one would ever report fight club(s). You’re welcome.
Also, I personally believe consent is very important, and would never suggest that someone be forced to participate in fight club. If the second party (or parties) refused to participate in the Charlatan’s fight club, we would be more than happy to allow stand-ins, or perhaps cardboard cutouts of students. We are a flexible bunch.
Sure, there’d be consequences I guess, but fuck it. Some people deserve to get called out for being punk ass bitches, and the tenets of libel should not hold us back from giving people what they deserve: an ass whooping.
Many years ago, long before most of us were conceived of, the Charlatan took on a new name for two primary reasons. The first was to separate itself from the university, as it was originally called the Carleton, which didn’t work because of journalistic integrity and independent reporting or whatever. The second was because the paper’s executive decision makers at the time wanted to make it out to be an edgy publication willing and able to publish risky content.
Now, after one too many close calls with the law, we have fallen far from the graces of our ancestral editors. We should be ashamed to don our Volume 50 hoodies, as we do not deserve to bear the obnoxiously yellow print that adorns them. In order to bring the controversy back to the Charlatan—and ensure we don’t get dinged with a lawsuit in the meantime—the paper should consider starting a fight club so students can get their punches in on each other, but like literally—not in print.
Featured graphic by Eva Laberge.
