Editorial | The Hesperian needs to resign
Illustration by HARRY LADA, Art Director
“The Hesperian,” a self-proclaimed independent Chapman student newspaper, will send an investigation request today to Chapman’s Chief Compliance Officer Gail Nishida. The publication aims to spark a university review into professor Liam O’Mara’s Twitter conduct with Candace Owens, a Black, conservative political commentator.
O’Mara had tweeted an image of a Ku Klux Klan hood to Owens in response to her attributing Black people as the “#1 (sic) violent offenders” against both Black and Asian American communities. The right-wing commentator also used the term “clown world” when referring to anti-white supremacy movements like Black Lives Matter and Asian Lives Matter.
In The Hesperian’s planned letter — which was sent to The Panther from a Chapman faculty member — the publication asserts the following: “We believe Dr. Liam O’Mara’s racist conduct violates the University’s code of ethics and subverts Chapman’s diversity objectives. As members of the Chapman family, we feel obligated to report such objectively racist conduct, which has brought disrepute to the University.”
The publication’s investigation request is reasonable. Sure, O’Mara has apologized profusely for his behavior and voluntarily dropped out of his own campaign race, but it is well within The Hesperian’s right to bring forth conduct they feel deserves repercussions.
But here’s the kicker. The Hesperian’s draft to Nishida featured 159 forged signatures of support from Chapman employees who hadn’t consented to using their names in the letter mock-up. These 159 signatures replicated the very same ones that appeared in a faculty petition that denounced former Chapman law professor John Eastman’s legal action in representing former President Donald Trump’s election fraud allegations.
In an email to these faculty members, The Hesperian evidently attempted to establish its own terms of signature authorization, stating: “Please respond to this email before Friday, close of business, confirming your willingness to sign the request. We require either your affirmative written consent or affirmative written lack of consent. If you do not consent, please explain why you are withholding your consent, as we intend to publish a story identifying all faculty members who refuse to sign the letter.”
Essentially, it seems as if the editors of The Hesperian are blackmailing veteran academics at Chapman into heeding their request to investigate O’Mara. The Hesperian even published a “burn book” article, naming some of them earlier today. We will not be linking the piece in this editorial, as a large majority of its content is inflammatory.
To The Hesperian editors: Are you joking? If you want to list all 159 faculty and staff in your letter, why don’t you first start by including your own staff’s names on the investigation request instead of identifying yourself as “Chapman's Hesperian Newspaper?” What is this, “Gossip Girl?”
This behavior is horrendous, especially of a publication that vows to report “high-quality articles free of zealotry and whining.” At this moment, editors of The Hesperian, your “student newspaper” — which is an inaccurate claim, as one of your editors, Ryan Marhoefer, has already graduated from Chapman — is behaving like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Both O’Mara and Eastman were foolish in their conduct, and the publication validly questions why the university hasn’t outwardly commented on the issue.
But The Hesperian doesn’t understand the irony of the perceived double standard they’re trying to call out, since they defend Eastman yet cherry-pick this instance to solely support their right-wing perspective. For instance, here they are condemning O’Mara while continuing to coddle Eastman — despite the deserved criticism he received after he not only confidently stood by his birther ideology on Vice President Kamala Harris, but also fueled falsehoods on election integrity and spoke at a Jan. 6 rally that led to the Capitol Hill insurrection that killed five people.
The article The Hesperian released earlier today can be found in the paper’s news section, despite it being written as a clear opinion and byproduct of an underlying motive that includes comments from their own Freedom X legal counsel. This “article” represents a blatant disregard of the basic principles of objective journalism. The Hesperian is embodying the very same biased media they denounce — promoting a political agenda in the guise of a publication.
Journalists are storytellers of fact, not propaganda. We held our breaths as an editorial board when The Hesperian published opinions that offended students, because everyone has a right to free speech. We bit our tongues when they claimed we weren’t covering O’Mara’s Twitter conduct, when we were actually crafting a report that features multiple perspectives, just as we did with Eastman. But now, The Hesperian is actively putting faculty at risk of criticism due to their own greed.
So we’d like to have a few questions answered.
Why didn’t you simply ask all professors around campus if they wanted to sign your letter, instead of preemptively including only the 159 faculty and staff who condemned Eastman in the draft of your investigation request? It seems as if you’re seeking childish revenge for your conservative base instead of actually caring about the effects of O’Mara’s conduct on Black communities.
Do you believe it's ethical to provide Chapman employees an ultimatum — saying you “require” them to respond with either consenting or not consenting to the unsolicited terms and agreements you established? It was not made clear in your solicitation email whether a lack of response would waive their signature in the final letter to Nishida.
To target only the faculty and staff members who petitioned against Eastman, and then to threaten them into signing your letter — by exposing some to potential public criticism from your articles — is a presumptuous act of pride. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
You have proved to the entire Chapman community how morally flawed, arrogant and self-entitled you are. Your words, if they had any influence on our campus before, no longer mean a morsel of a thing. You’ve lost all integrity and credibility as a “newspaper.”
This is the last time we will voluntarily discuss The Hesperian in our publication. To the editors: If you can’t answer the questions we posed in this editorial truthfully, without performing a political spin or redirecting your responses to unrelated topics, then get off of our campus. We know we won’t miss you.