UVa Student Newspaper Apologizes for Cringeworthy April Fools’ Issue

This from the Chronicle:

The University of Virginia has seen just about every controversy endemic to higher education over the past few years: a president who beat back a board-engineered ouster, a reported — and later discredited — account of gang rape at a fraternity house, and a black student violently arrested by the police off campus.

Well, piggybacking off that last controversy, the Charlottesville campus crossed another one off the list Wednesday: a student newspaper’s April Fools’ joke issue gone terribly, terribly wrong. Behold the front page:



The Cavalier Daily, which covered the arrest of Martese Johnson extensively, was bombarded with complaints of racism and insensitivity. It has since apologized and removed that story along with another, “Zeta Psi hosts ‘Rosa Parks’ party.” Ouch.

College newspapers have a long, regrettable history of getting themselves into April Fools’ trouble, and that tradition seems unlikely to end soon.