It was a pretty polite week in the hate mail department. Mostly people just wanted to be helpful and ask how our day was, which was pretty appreciated. But here they are, below, the considerate citizens of the internet:
In general, just checking in.
SUB: HELLO bro
Body: How are you?
Wondering if we may have mistaken Boston for the New England area generally—no worries, common mistake—that time that Hamilton wrote by Boston sucks.
SUB: Obligatory Boston response
BODY: I just moved to Boston in May and have to say, yeah, there's more bad than good about living here. However, my jaw dropped when you took a shot at the schools here. Seriously? MIT and Harvard, dude. I can understand how someone whose worldview is fundamentally rooted in journalism, and not technology (meaning REAL technology — healthcare, aerospace, etc. — not "social media") would overlook those in favor of NYC schools, but come on, man.
All of the complaints leveled against Boston (both in your piece and in The Onion's) are more appropriately leveled against New Englanders as a whole. It's New Englanders who are closed-minded dicks, not Bostonians — it's just that Boston has the highest population density in New England. I actually ended up in Boston as part of my fleeing Connecticut, many of whose denizens make the "lesser Wahlbergs" look like Nobel Laureates. I wish more people would insult Connecticut.
In any case, still a little puzzled by The Onion's outburst, but less puzzled at your knee-jerk piling on.
Keep up the work.
Preemptive criticism, in which someone tells that the NYT was stupid for spending time covering a story, which we then decided to cover because it was about Nutella.
SUB: The Dumbest Article the NY Times Has Ever Published?
Body: The New York Times devoted 843 words and three reporters to what amounts to Columbia students eating a lot of Nutella.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/nyregion/for-columbia-students-nutella-in-a-dining-hall-may-be-too-tempting.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0&pagewanted=print
Something tells me Drew could have a field day with this.
Noting that we may have published an intentional lie.
SUB: KKK at Oberlin article
Body: Specifically re: this paragraph:
According to a person with access to the faculty mailing list, faculty members were told-"unofficially"-that "the investigation into this incident was dropped when it was discovered that the person responsible was someone within the MRC [the Multicultural Resource Center], who would be disciplined internally"; according to conversations with other members of the Oberlin community, this appears to be a widespread, and widely-believed, rumor. The same source, who asked to remain anonymous so as not to lose access to the mailing list, indicated that the MRC, whose former director, Eric Estes, is now the Dean of Students, has been criticized for the amount of student money it receives, and that its leadership has "had trouble justifying how many campus coordinators they have on staff."
I am a student at Oberlin and attending the MRC and other campus organization's programming today, which includes a rally and an all-campus convocation. The MRC's LGBTQ Community Coordinator, Lorena Guerrero, confirmed with us that MRC staffers are not responsible and the investigation that the administration is conducting has not identified any of them as suspects.
I am certain that the rumor you published is an intentional lie intended to spread confusion among Oberlin students.
That's all! Have a nice weekend, everyone.