Controversial Editor Fired From College Newspaper

The editor of the Valley College student newspaper, who was called a racist by student and faculty protesters for writing a column stating that high birth rates hinder the education of minorities, has been fired.

The head of the journalism department, which sponsors the Valley Star as a teaching laboratory, said Wednesday that Chris Mayda was suspended from her job as editor for the remainder of the school year because she was a poor manager, not because of the uproar that followed publication of her column.

Mayda, however, contended that she was dismissed in part because the column and her other controversial writings had angered some students and teachers.

“People are products of their experiences, and the experiences of faculty and staff have led them to look for a scapegoat, and I’m it,” said Mayda, 43, who said she is considering legal action against the college.

The suspension was decided on by a 4-2 vote of journalism department faculty members last week, department Chairman Roger Graham said Wednesday. The vote followed a meeting in which many student staff members complained that she was a bad manager and called for her resignation.

Technically, her suspension is for 30 days. But since the last issue of the weekly paper is scheduled to be published May 28, she has effectively been dismissed.

Graham said the controversial column, which led to accusations of racism from black and Latino student groups and some of the faculty, had “no bearing on the decision” to dismiss her as editor.

“We’ve been hearing complaints about her management of the paper,” he said. “I strongly support a student’s right to write controversial pieces. I don’t always agree with them, but I support her rights.”

Mayda was suspended because she would not share decision-making with other staff members and repeatedly took stories home to work on them on her own computer, Graham said. These actions “interfered with the hands-on learning experience” for other students, he said.

“She was supposed to involve her team--the staff of the paper--to the greatest possible extent. She really didn’t do that,” Graham said.

“We had a bright, hard-working editor who is independent and able to do almost everything and often did,” Graham said. “It’s like having a basketball player who keeps the ball all the time.”

Tony Cifarelli, a journalism professor who is the newspaper’s adviser and who voted against the suspension, said that at his request, her controversial writings were not discussed at the closed faculty meeting on whether to suspend her. The content of her columns was not relevant to the debate over her management ability, he said.

Mayda said her attorney asked her not to discuss the censorship issue. But her supporters argued that she was fired to silence her.

“I don’t think it was fair; she works very, very hard and she was treated badly,” said Valley Star writer Katheryn Gunn, who resigned as managing editor after Mayda’s dismissal. “I think the faculty gave in to pressure from people angry over the column. Most of the dissent on staff started after her column.”

The column--published April 2 under the headline “Do Literacy and Babies Mix?”--said high birth rates among less-educated, lower-income Latinos and blacks are forcing parents to divide their attention among too many children to give them needed educational and economic opportunities.

The column caused bitter divisions among Valley Star staff members, leading about 10 of them to ask her to resign.

In the campus furor that followed, Chris Sharpe, an African-American student editor who was among those calling for her resignation, said the column expressed “outrageous racist ideas.” History professor Ferrol Broslawsky wrote a letter to the newspaper, calling the column “intellectually prurient and blatantly racist.”

Cifarelli, who has defended her throughout the controversy, said Wednesday: “I continue to believe she is the best journalism student I’ve had in 15 years of teaching. She’s the most intelligent and one of the most talented.”