A Hack Headline

The Republican Club at Boston University is offering a $250 scholarship for which only white students are eligible. The move is a deliberate provocation in order to raise the question of race-based policies on the BU campus. The Boston Globe story today by James Vaznis, acknowledges this at the beginning:

Boston University's Republican students group has started a scholarship for white students, to spark debate about race-based programs.

“We are trying to convey the absurdity of any race-based scholarship,” said Joseph Mroszczyk, a senior from Danvers who is president of the university's College Republicans. “I don't think race should be part of any scholarship. It should be based on merit or economic need.”

Fair coverage by the Globe, in the story at least. But how does the Globe justify their headline for this piece? It is:

GOP group at BU offers aid to whites

Couldn’t they have simply written ‘BU Republicans challenge affirmative action’? That would have been far more accurate, especially considering that (as the story reports) neither the Massachusetts nor the national Republican party wants anything to do with this cause.

Brian Dodge, executive director of the Massachusetts Republican Party, said the state party did not endorse the scholarship. "Their actions are misguided and offensive," he said.

A national party spokesman called the scholarship "highly inappropriate."

How courageous of them both! A far more accurate headline would have been

GOP rebukes conservative students

And yet these same Republican party apparachiks who flee from a discussion of affirmative action like Cowardly Lions are probably trying to analyze why the last election was such a bust for their party!