I am watching ABC’s 6 O’clock News and a familiar face flashes across the screen.

It’s Editor-in-chief Sharman Bruni of Solano Community College’s student newspaper, The Tempest.

In the latest issue of The Tempest, the staff published a comic strip “seen by some as a racial slur against black men” according to The Daily Republic.

On Wednesday Sept. 28, The Tempest staff held a meeting on their campus which garnered attention from outraged students and teachers as well as local newspapers and news stations.  

The controversy over the cartoon has sparked a fierce debate about the staff and choices by the editor-in-chief.  

Being an editor-in-chief, I sympathize with Bruni and I will fight for her and the rest of her staff.

To me, I don’t want to talk about the content of the comic. Instead, I want to focus on the reaction.

Since the reaction sparked so quickly and negatively, I thought that the school administration would have talked to the staff prior to the conference.

Nope.

According to The Daily Republic article, “no one from the administration or student body has contacted them.”

Personally, I am stunned on many levels being a black student journalist. However, I am most outraged at how a simple mistake has created a whirlwind of outrageous criticism.

According to a Solano Times-Herald article, the staff endured frequent questions and criticism. Numerous black students apparently booed Phillip Temple, the black cartoonist who drew the comic.

It’s true that the strip was published without any background information in a printed edition with in-depth coverage about the death of a black football player, Ennis Johnson.

However, the students and teachers fighting against the Tempest staff on Wednesday forgot one crucial piece of information: The Tempest is a student-run newspaper.

Community college student newspapers are a place for aspiring journalists to hone their skills and, most importantly, learn from their mistakes.

And that’s all that happened here: a mistake.

If, or when, The Inquirer makes a mistake that gets media attention, I hope that any critics would write a letter to the editor or have a respectful discussion with me or the staff.

Any type of student who makes an error deserves constructive criticism to learn and grow.

I support The Tempest staff and respect how well they handled themselves completely independent of administration during such a verbal onslaught.

No student, especially any student journalist who has a responsibility to their student body, deserves the type of hell that The Tempest staff has gone through over the past week.  

My regards go out to The Tempest staff; I can’t think of many people who could have handled what they did.