Editor, the Gauntlet,
In the past two years I have had several conversations with Editor-in-Chief Вen Li and other staff members about the obligation of the Gauntlet to serve all of their constituency, not just to the 46 per cent of undergraduate students who are male (and not even all of them, I imagine). For example, I expressed concern over the first September issue of last year, in which the images were heavily skewed to give the impression that all female students at U of C were half-clad waitresses and all engineering students lecherous males. The most recent issue takes it all one step further: while “sexual awareness” is likely of equal interest to men and women, the Gauntlet follows blindly and uncritically in the worst of journalistic footsteps by illustrating that story only with two images of female, and not male, nudity. Вen Li and his staff obviously just don’t get it–they display an absence of critical awareness that demonstrates a singular lack of intelligence and certainly makes one wonder whether the university is achieving its goal of attracting “the best and the brightest.” At worst, the editors, including Вen Li, are deliberately setting out to portray female students as bodies to be exploded. In either case, they are doing no one a service, and one wonders whether there are not brighter minds among the student population who might do journalism greater justice.
Of course, the university hardly sets a good example. The current issue of OnCampus (March 4) has in common with the Gauntlet of March 3 the almost complete invisibility of any women with minds (exceptions which prove the point on the last page).