Controversies and cancels: All the cooked shit student mags have pulled

The ‘Letters to The Editor’ section in 2008 issue 18 of Canta flooded with complaints following the controversial column, “Trust Deborah - She’s Always Right” discriminating against ‘fat’ people.

When you cover taboo topics, as student magazines do, sometimes it’s going to miss the mark. And sometimes, the stuff that gets published is just plain stupid.

Uncovering the cancellations and controversies of student media is initially met with some difficulty. For starters, there’s only so much that’s actually online as up until the past 10-15 years or so, issues were only in print and Google only reveals so much. A quick search brings up a few news articles but the real juicy stuff is hidden away in a website so hated by the academic community many would immediately bypass it. A website that hasn’t changed since we were twelve years old researching on the library computers for a school report. A place of obscurity but one that is deeply rooted in familiarity and consistency…Wikipedia.

It holds the motherload of any and all student media controversies and a weird amount of other info. But nevertheless, it’s an easy starting point.

Thanks to Wikipedia, a cheeky lead from the ‘controversy’ section led me back to Macmillan Brown Library to go through the old Canta archives. In the 2008 and 2009 issues, there was a weekly column called “Trust Deborah - She’s Always Right” and by that title, you can already get a sense of where this is going. Every week some random chick named Deborah spewed her offensive opinions in approximately 200 words. Subsequently, every week the letters to the editor section was flooded with complaints about said column.

The column began halfway through 2008, appearing with Deborahs’ hot take on ‘fat’ people who she considered to be people with a BMI over 23 (which is actually a perfectly normal BMI). She claims the “fat fucks” are “inferior in every way” and “greedy, mentally weak and stupid,” and so many other completely incorrect things that are just not worth repeating.

Deborah’s column about ‘fat’ people in 2008 issue of Canta.

Trust Deborah disappeared for the next issue following eight complaints in the letter’s to the editor section and a personal apology from the editor himself, Matt Maguire.

But that wasn’t the end of the column. Instead, it reappeared in every single issue of 2009, where each issue had at least one complaint about the column as Deborah covered topics from climate change, human rights, religion, and mental illness.

Caption: “Trust Deborah - She’s Always Right” column from 2009 issues of Canta.

The University of Auckland’s Craccum magazine has been running weekly publications since 1927. Since then, it’s major controversial moments include a highly contentious piece on a graphic guide to suicide and a 2019 issue that was censored for having a “straight up pornographic issue” according to editor at the time, Bailey Verry.

On the topic, Verry concluded that of all the bullshit Craccum has pulled over the past 100 years, “I find it hilarious that the issue with a sexy Velma is the only one in Craccum’s dubious history to ever be censored.”

In 2012, a Special General Meeting (SGM) was called by Auckland University Students Association (AUSA) to evict Thomas Dykes from his position as editor of Craccum, calling for a motion of no confidence against him. It was believed that Craccum had become offensive, overtly political, and unrepresentative of all students under Dyke’s editorship.

The final result of the vote was 144-83 against the motion with 10 abstentions, meaning Dyke’s kept his job. Ironically, the student behind the petition which sparked the SGM, Kirk Jacinto, unsuccessfully ran against Dykes for editorship the previous year. Jacinto had said before the result of the SGM was announced that he would run for the position again if Dykes was removed. You can connect the dots on that one.

Moving along to another Auckland-based publication, AUT’s Debate Magazine has stayed relatively out of the harsh controversial limelight. Given its common name, every Google search for controversies is pretty much a dead end, only pulling up the magazine’s website and an article from Critic Te Arohi discussing their lack of a designer in 2021. After AUT’s student association failed to hire a designer, the magazine went on hiatus for five entire weeks.

The editor Rebecca Zhong cited their lack of editorial independence from AUTSA, saying it has the potential to “stifle and restrict the unfettered fashion of a student publication.”

Up until this point, all these controversial little things were met with public outrage, but never taken to court. Until Nexus, from the University of Waikato, had a little run-in with the legal system.

And by ‘little run-in,’ I mean the “worst defamation [case] in New Zealand history” at the time.

Way back in 1974, an edition of Nexus made allegations about the Head of the History Department, Professor Jensen. Allegedly, Jensen “pursued vendettas against fellow staff members, by falsely promising promotions and awarding students they were supervising lower grades in order to discredit them.” At the time, Jensen agreed not to sue.

Two years later, Nexus re-published the material with a new publisher which resulted in Jensen suing the editor, co-editor and printer, Wanganui Newspapers Ltd. The editor and co-editor retracted their statements, but the printers challenged Jensen to prove the allegations, citing “innocent dissemination.”

The judge found that the printers, who were not the official printers of Nexus but a jobbing printer, were aware of the nature of the magazine and should have vetted it properly for defamation. Jensen was awarded $30,000, equivalent to about $105,000 in 2015, across 13 claims.

Victoria University’s Salient, had threats of a defamation suit against them in 1985 following a ‘student handbook’ that was published containing sexual harassment claims against a professor. Editor Jane Hurley wrote that the claims of sexual harassment were misleading and suggested a more severe issue, clarifying that the misconduct took the form of “unwanted comments, the innuendo, the disparagement of women simply because they are women.”

The following year, Victoria University enforced a sexual harassment policy to give students support around the issue and was in part due to Hurley’s reporting. Now that’s a slay.

Critic Te Arohi, of the University of Otago, arguably had their most controversial moment only a few years ago. In 2018, their menstruation issue featured a graphic cartoon depiction of a menstruating woman, made entirely on Microsoft Paint. The issue received international attention, with CNN calling the editor at 2am and stories published in Reuters.

Overnight, 2,000 copies were removed from stands by Campus Watch, causing an uproar. The University later apologised, saying it was a “mistake,” but if anything, their actions made the cover more popular than if they had done nothing. 2018 editor of Critic Te Arohi, Joel MacManus, revealed that the PDF version of the issue had been read over 9000 times online, 8900 more than what they would typically receive.

He cited the wise words of Hermione Granger that sums this all up quite nicely: “If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!”