I want to begin by saying that for any pain I have caused anyone in the past week, I am sincerely sorry. There is no excuse for adding racial tension or intentional disregard of another’s worth. It was never my intention to cause suffering or distress.
We intended to parody ourselves, both Whitman staff and students, as periodically blind to the way in which a mechanical devotion to diversity celebration can defeat its own purpose. The punch lines were never intended to be the stereotypes themselves, but the failures of the self-proclaimed “enlightened” in their misguided efforts to be labeled as accepting.

Sophie and I clearly failed to communicate that we too consider these stereotypes deeply offensive, and that we wished to contribute to their discredit in this public airing: as a means of preventing their being swept under the rug from where they are periodically resurrected by those who try to use them for harm.

What we had intended, however, is clearly beside the point. We deeply hurt people, we were too ignorant to have foreseen it, and for that I will never be able to apologize enough. As a white male, I must always be cognizant of the grave mistakes of my ancestors and be sure to never shift blame, diminish charges of prejudice brought against me, or find rationale for my errors in the actions of others like me. That is to say, there is no debating this: the article was offensive and racist and Sophie and I were wrong.

Furthermore, I had thought it self-evident that we have never considered President Bridges to be prejudiced, but have used his role as an authority figure to make a larger point. Like April Fools Day, taking any college president to task in the student paper is historic tradition. But we over-stepped that by failing to make it unfailingly clear that this was satire.

We have been asked whether we felt comfortable making this article about Americans Indians, as opposed to other minorities, because they had a smaller presence on campus. We wrote about American Indians because President Bridges’ office is on American Indian land. Huge amounts of prejudice and rewriting of history by Americans is still taking place even within Walla Walla and we clearly failed in our effort to condemn our culture’s general ambivalence towards this issue. We would not have written about any group if we thought we would have hurt people as we have.

The most important thing I want to stress, in any event, is how sorry I am for hurting the people that I have as a result of the article.