{"id":193,"date":"2024-11-10T20:30:29","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T20:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/?p=193"},"modified":"2024-11-10T20:31:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T20:31:10","slug":"why-ucup-cut-ties-with-the-maroon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"Why UCUP Cut Ties With the maroon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by UCUP Organizer, November 10, 2024, 2:31 \/\/\/<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cthe maroon needs us more than we need them.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chicago maroon <\/em>has long asserted itself as the go-to newspaper on campus for good journalism. From the second we get here, it\u2019s where we\u2019re told to look to find rigorous, comprehensive coverage of a whole host of neighborhood topics. In its constitution, the maroon<\/em> loudly proclaims its \u201ccommitment to truth, the well-being of our campus and local communities, and democracy.\u201d Unfortunately, we\u2019ve found that for the maroon<\/em>, these commitments only last as long as the clicks do. In light of the maroon\u2019s <\/em>continued endangerment of protestors and collaboration with administration and the police, UChicago United for Palestine has been forced to sever ties with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The maroon\u2019s<\/em> priorities are not in protecting the student body or the surrounding community. Their editors have aligned themselves with cpd, ucpd, and administration instead, privileging their words and aiding and abetting their repressive crusades. If you attend a protest, the maroon<\/em> is more than willing to go out of their way to doxx you by surveilling your social media account; posting pictures of you; linking your name; and approving a wave of racist, vitriolic comments against you. Following a student\u2019s violent arrest, the maroon<\/em> took the time to FOIA for all of their most sensitive legal documents and released the contents for no reason other than their own amusement. Despite all of this, the maroon<\/em> has treated us as if we owe them something. After intentionally and unnecessarily jeopardizing the safety of a member of our community, the maroon <\/em>still had the audacity to request comment from us regarding a subsequent rally. We very firmly declined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years ago, when the maroon<\/em> published a photo of a Black minor who was arrested in a University building, they eventually took it down. They said that \u201cThe [m]aroon<\/em> did a lot of damage \u2014 it opened up a young person and his family to harmful exposure, at no benefit to anyone else.\u201d Clearly, they haven\u2019t taken their own words to heart. Writers who show consideration for the safety of those they report on are denied decision-making power, while some of the maroon\u2019s<\/em> highest editors are overjoyed to throw their peers to the wolves to rake in a few more readers. As it stands today, the maroon <\/em>has doubled down on farming clicks by resuming their campaign of preying on people at their most vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, when given the opportunity to ask influential members of the University hard-hitting and critical questions, the maroon <\/em>folds. The maroon <\/em>has endless reserves of skepticism for student organizers and even some of its own writers; it censors them, interjects in their articles, or publishes articles to compete with them in the name of \u201cneutrality.\u201d Even so, they will gladly softball the nearest director or administrator they can get their hands on for what can hardly be described as an \u201cinterview.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our problems with the maroon <\/em>represent some of the movement\u2019s most egregious issues with the press more broadly, both on and off campus. The press never have enough room to quote us honestly, but their hands are always free to put us in danger \u2014 to doxx, harass, and belittle us while regurgitating police narratives word-for-word. When protestors have to leave a kettled street, the press can\u2019t be bothered to move out of the way; instead, they\u2019d rather block us and let the cops make arrests for the best footage. The press zoom in on our faces for money shots while we\u2019re being detained. They take photos of our bruised bodies and sell them as memorabilia. Our likenesses are torn from us and cracked in a million directions by people who couldn\u2019t give less of a fuck about us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from the principled, diligent reporting of a select few, our interactions with the press have amounted to a charade of neverending passivity in exchange for bad-faith coverage. We are crammed into their timeline; we follow their rules; we compress and minimize ourselves, squabble about the optics of putting \u201cisrael\u201d in lowercase, of saying we hate the cops, or of using a Fanon quote that sounds too inflammatory. Thankfully, all of our noble efforts at sitting on our hands and holding our tongues are rewarded with a flurry of middling-to-bad articles hanging on the nearest zionist\u2019s every word. (The good press is produced by people who wouldn\u2019t mind us being meaner anyhow.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to move forward, we have to reject the assumption that the press has a monopoly on \u201cgood optics.\u201d We have to ask: <\/em>Optics for whom? <\/em>Who are we appealing to, and who are we leaving behind in the process? <\/em>In the end, there is no one \u201coptic\u201d or \u201cgood optic\u201d<\/em> because there is no universal viewer. <\/em>When we become convinced that there is \u2014 that the press captures a singular, homogenous audience \u2014 we cater ourselves to the press and their limited readership over the people who want to hear from us the most. We overlook the fact that we don\u2019t have to write on their terms<\/em>. We never did, and we won\u2019t anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The maroon<\/em> needs us more than we need them. We have press right here at Deer Woman<\/em>. For as long as they continue their dangerous and parasitic \u201cjournalism,\u201d the maroon<\/em> will be the last to hear from us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motyl, UChicago United for Palestine<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by UCUP Organizer, November 10, 2024, 2:31 \/\/\/ \u201cthe maroon needs us more than we need them.\u201d  The chicago maroon has long asserted itself as the go-to newspaper on campus for good journalism. From the second we get here, it\u2019s where we\u2019re told to look to find rigorous, comprehensive coverage of a whole host of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deerwoman.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}