On Tuesday March 26th, I had the opportunity to sit on a LGBTQ+ Speaker panel and share my experience as a Black, queer person at JCU. I was asked if I had faced any other discrimination toward my gay/queer identity other than my first year roommate conflict that I had shared. I responded by saying there hasn’t, but I unfortunately forgot about my experience this year reading the Carroll News.

Multiple times this year, both my sexual and gender identity have been challenged by the Carroll News through the publication of opinion pieces. It is difficult to place into words how angry it makes me feel to read a column which discredits and removes justification from the experience of members of the LGBTQIA+ community on campus. In fact, the out and proud queer persons and their allies, carry the university on its back when it comes to creating social change. We are constantly advocating for safer spaces, inclusive practices, and other very important aspects that privileged folk like your conservative columnist neglect to recognize. This newspaper is actively seeking to prove free speech is an open door to discriminate against marginalized identities and state harmful, unfactual comments without repercussion. It is sick, twisted, and extremely against Jesuit values. My experience as an out and proud, queer, Black person gives me the ability to share my story to amplify the stories of others. The Carroll News has sought to remove all of the progress that students, faculty, and staff have made. As much as you want to claim this to be a revolutionary act, you are displaying your bias as an organization and as a paper.

You should be ashamed for how this paper has been run this year. A great example of poor leadership and even worse, taste.

– Mannie Brown, Class of 2019