Entering his office at around 8 a.m. on April 15, 1993 -- exactly ten years ago today -- Daily Pennsylvanian General Manager Eric Jacobs received a disturbing piece of news.
"I got a phone call from somebody in DRL or the Chem Building, I don't remember, saying 'I just saw all the copies of the DP thrown in a black plastic bag and taken away,'" Jacobs says. "After I received a second phone call, I called Penn Police."
At the same time, he struggled to reach the newspaper's printers in Delaware to secure extra copies of that day's issue, which were reprinted within a few hours and distributed later that day on Locust Walk.
The press run had been stolen by self-described "members of the black community," who, angered by the views of controversial and conservative columnist Gregory Pavlik, had intercepted the paper that contained his final column of the semester.
"That was a pretty wild day," Jacobs says. "We were trying to figure out who did this and why were they so angry at the paper and what the administration action was and what [then-University President Sheldon] Hackney was going to do about it."
Pavlik was known for his racially charged columns -- in a February issue of the paper, he addressed an incident involving the Onyx Senior Honor Society, a black fraternity, performing a ritual that included throwing eggs at the windows of Quadrangle residents. When the Quad residents, not the fraternity, were ultimately punished, Pavlik used his column to scorn the seemingly lighter standards the University held for the minority group.
And his writing came at a time when race relations were already strained on campus. In January of that year, conflict had erupted when then-College freshman Eden Jacobowitz yelled from his High Rise East window at a group of black sorority women who were making noise below, calling them "water buffalo." Following the incident, which eventually drew national media attention, Jacobowitz underwent an extensive judicial process within the University for allegedly using hate speech.
Combined, the two incidents ignited a fierce debate, both on campus and across the country, about the conflict between free speech and preventing harassment, as well as the University's regulatory role.
For members of the DP staff, that period was anything but forgettable.
"Nothing like that had happened before," Jacobs says.
"It was a very contentious time at the University and at the newspaper specifically," says Baltimore Sun reporter Stephanie Desmon, who served as assistant managing editor of the DP at the time. "We were the center of this firestorm, partly of our own making, because we had printed this controversial column."
Philadelphia Daily News arts and entertainment editor Howard Gensler, then a member of the DP's alumni board, recalls feeling that the issue was ludicrous.
"I remember sitting in on a couple [alumni board] meetings when this was going on and talking with [then-DP Executive Editor] Stephen Glass and saying, 'Chin up, boy!'" Gensler says. "It always seemed just kind of silly. It seemed at the time that everyone overreacted."
Jacobs recalls the DP newsroom as being a stressful and angry place: "The first emotion was practical -- how do we get the paper out? What will we do with the stories if no one gets to see them? What will we do about the ads? The next emotion was anger -- who wanted to do something as destructive as this to the paper?"
In addition to the shock of having an entire press run stolen, the next issue DP staffers reacted to was the University's failure to take action against the perpetrators.
Jacobs adds that since the incident, some states, such as Maryland, have passed laws against the theft of newspapers. Pennsylvania, however, holds no such laws other than those prohibiting the illegal theft of property.
The newspaper had already encountered criticism from the minority community, with some individuals claiming that minority groups were underrepresented.
But despite these rebukes, DP staff members were in agreement that the newspaper had not been disregarding the minority voice on purpose. Still, the newspaper had made attempts to recruit minorities as staff members, according to Gensler.
Gensler emphasized that the paucity of minority reporters was not an institutional phenomenon of the DP but rather "an unfortunate by-product of the makeup of the student body."
Beyond tensions with the minority community, Jacobs adds that, for reporters and himself, it was particularly distressing that the students' attempts at exhibiting their free speech infringed on others' free speech rights.
"It always bugged me that students who had chosen not to be part of the activity feel compelled to censor the activity," Gensler says.
These frustrations were only exasperated by the national media attention that the water buffalo incident drew.
Jacobs remembers more than one local television station and numerous national radio talk shows contacting the executive editor regarding interviews for weeks following the incident.
Desmon says that she never felt she received any negative stigma due to being a staff member. Her feelings toward the University, however, are not so forgiving.
"I felt, and still feel, we were incredibly mistreated by the University despite the protestations of Sheldon Hackney and his book," Desmon says.
"I will never give a dime to Penn," she adds.
