On the morning of Dec. 12, 1987, students heading into the mailroom in Jonas Clark Hall found a surprising sight: Hundreds of torn-up prints of a Clark student newspaper were plastered over the walls. Handwriting on the papers lambasted them as misogynistic, white supremacist and generally offensive. On the front page, someone had written, “Your filthy, smelly, foul vomit offends 95% of EARTH.”

In the following weeks, the attacks intensified. The students who criticized the papers were physically threatened and verbally assaulted. Dog poop was smeared on the paper’s office door, and eventually someone wrote on the mailroom art piece: “Lezzies and gays… you’ll pay for this with your blood!”

This controversy surrounded the latest edition of The Alternative, which many students called “disgusting, degrading, sexist, racist, misogynistic and generally offensive.” The Alternative was one of two student-run newspapers at Clark, proclaiming to provide a voice for the “alternate” side of journalism.

With this edition, many people thought it had gone too far.

The Origins of The Alternative

The Alternative was established in 1983, proclaiming in its charter to be a voice for “the new, the different, the interesting and the controversial.”

“By engaging in investigating journalism and exploring issues that others are not willing to discuss, The Alternative acts as the conscience of the otherwise complacent Clark community,” the paper’s charter stated.

In its infant years, The Alternative did exactly this. Its first edition had articles promoting the Latin American Student Association and introducing Amnesty International, alongside rather insightful discussions about politics.

“Being a new organization, The Alternative has no traditions, no history and no hierarchy,” read the intro to the Alternative’s first edition. “This affords us the opportunity to experiment, to take risks.”

The paper also embraced many non-traditional newspaper features. It frequently had polls, creative graphics and photography and an abundance of satire, cartoons and other kinds of humor. Without a set schedule, it was printed only a few times a year. Every print had an “abstract cover page depicting Clarkies,” according to the intro.

Like The Scarlet, The Alternative was funded by student fees and free to everyone.

Of course, The Alternative always had bigoted undertones. But most thought this was a reflection of the campus as a whole. Students widely agreed that Clark, like many colleges in the 1980s, had a vibrant culture of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, according to Sally Lee in a Worcester Magazine article. It was not uncommon to find swastikas carved into the walls at Goddard Library, or KKK slogans in the bathroom.

The Alternative was not the only newspaper to offend people, either. According to Lee, The Scarlet’s 1985 Spree Day print, a parody of USA TODAY called “JEW S.A. TODAY,” received national coverage and was called “an offense to human rights and dignity” in a letter signed by nine university administrators and staff. One satire piece in the edition expressed sentiment for bringing the KKK to Clark.

The Scarlet’s Spree Day edition, a year later, had sexual comments about University President Richard B. Traina’s wife.

Despite all this, The Alternative clung tightly to its values of freedom of expression. “We encourage anyone with an opinion or an idea for an article or rebuttal to write to us,” the newspaper stated.

December 1987: The Big Controversy

In December 1987, the newspaper published a special issue celebrating its five-year anniversary. With a satirical photo on the front page and an almost-naked woman in an advertisement on the back, inside were, among other things:

• An article questioning whether Latin American Clark students held green cards
• An article saying “You Know Clark is Getting Bad When… male students start dating Worcester women, and liking it.”
• A satirical article which asked, “If women are going into the working world, who’s going to make dinner?”
• A poem titled “My Dear Adolf”

According to one student as reported in The Scarlet, the issue “insulted half of campus and many people in the community.”

The night after the paper was distributed, a group of 30 students destroyed around 800 copies of the paper, or $610, to create an “art piece” in the mailroom, according to the Worcester Telegram. Many of the paper’s staff lambasted the students’ actions: according to The Scarlet, one remarked, “That’s like saying if I don’t like the Women’s Center, I should firebomb it.”

The Vice President of Student Council stated that “This really was book burning.”

The Alternative’s staff also reminded everyone how they professed freedom of expression above all else, and would be more than happy to publish any rebuttals or have discussions with people. “The paper has proper channels for comments or improvement, none of which were used,” Editor-in-Chief Haig Setian said, according to The Scarlet.

Other staff remarked that the offensive parts of the edition were satire and should not be taken too seriously.

According to journalist Michael Warshaw in Lee’s article, however, the one rule of satire is that it must be funny.

“I think the real crime of this issue was that it wasn’t funny,” Warshaw stated.

The Reactions

A week after, a letter signed by President Traina and other university officials condemning the edition was distributed to students, faculty, staff and “quite likely” to parents, as reported in the Worcester Telegram. And according to Lee in the Worcester Magazine, Traina especially got involved in the controversy.

“The editors sometimes think of themselves as coordinators of whatever is turned in, rather than monitors of the contents of their publications,” Traina stated.

“For me, editing is an administrative role,” said Editor-in-Chief Setian, as reported by Lee. “We pretty much print anything.”

But Traina railed against this philosophy, emphasizing Setian’s lack of experience in journalism before being given “free rein” of the paper. With Setian, “It was as if the school had given him a car without teaching him how to drive,” Traina said. “He ran it off the road.”

For these reasons, Traina and many people on campus suggested the adoption of a “review board” to monitor the contents of student publications, ensuring that the students produce “a paper our grandmothers could read without fainting.”

Without a review board, “we are drawn into hastily written, ill-considered, and unedited articles,” he said as reported by Lee. “Freedom without accountability can be a destructive force.”

This didn’t stop The Alternative from publishing. In April 1991, the Student Council froze its budget.

The Scarlet reporting suggests that, as reasons, the council cited unauthorized signatures on the club’s purchase orders, spending club money on alcohol and dinner parties for the editors instead of making publications. As well as sexual harassment charges after calling a female student the “Dish of the Month.”

Finally, the controversial paper was put to rest.

Many colleges have “alternative” newspapers promoting views different from the campus mainstream. In Worcester today, The Fenwick Review at Holy Cross strives to “articulate thoughtful alternatives to the dominant campus ethos,” according to the paper’s website.

The Alternative tells a compelling story about unchecked journalism and serves as a reminder of why editors should supervise not just grammar and style but the contents of their publications as well.

As stated by Lee, “there is no such thing as free press without a price.”

Note: Unless otherwise stated, all quotes in this piece were sourced by old editions of The Scarlet and looking through The Alternative.