News

University of Canterbury students have complained that their resident student magazine Canta has failed to print letters, suggesting Canta has a bias towards certain student associations. Complaints come from the coverage, or lack thereof, of the University of Canterbury Students’ Association’s (UCSA) decision not to take action against the Engineering Society’s (ENSOC) controversial promotional video that was released earlier this year.

In May, ENSOC released a promotional video for their store, which was a mock of 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop.” The individual in the video painted himself black, to be like, you know, 50 Cent. The video caused a stir within the University, especially from the feminist society on campus, FemSoc. Shortly after, UCSA released a statement saying that they would not take formal action against ENSOC. Their justification was that the video “did not break their constitution or the recent amendment to our constitution … (i) to commit to representing all student diversity, including culture, religion, gender, ability, age and sexual orientation, and to supporting equality in theory and in practice.”

On the UCSA’s Facebook page, student responses were extremely hostile. Students claimed they were “totally ashamed of the video” and that the UCSA decision was “spineless.” Comments also said that the UCSA constitution had been “stomped to the ground” and “blinkered away” by the decision.

It is alleged that students of the same opinion then contacted Canta, through the “Letters to the Editor” forum, to express their views on the decision. However, these were not published. A student told Critic, “A lot of letters were sent to the editor complaining of [UCSA’s decision], but [Canta] never publish anything that is against UCSA.” The student said, “There is a definite trend [in the letters to the editor] towards supporting ENSOC and UCSA.” The student claimed that Canta purposefully does not publish letters that oppose decisions made by UCSA in general. After UCSA released their decision on 27 May, Canta cut their “Letters to the editor” section entirely for the following issue.

The President of FemSoc, Sionainn Byrnes, alleges similar experiences. Byrnes said, “[FemSoc have] tried to write articles and letters in the past, as individuals, [and] often those few that are printed are accompanied by sort of rude messages and pictures. Recently I think we've tried less just because there isn't a whole lot of confidence in Canta – from a lot of students, not just FemSoc.”

Critic spoke to Greg Stubbings, who has stepped in as acting Editor of Canta whilst Editor Hannah Herchenbach is on leave. In response to the allegations, he said, “I can say without any hesitation I have never not printed a letter like that.” He said the claims were “a bit of a myth” and “that’s almost slander to say that I would never print something like that … I’m definitely not hiding behind anything.”

“I would love to see someone point to a letter that hasn’t been printed, I think they would find that either they had sent it to the wrong email address, which is possible, though we do check the old [address] quite regularly, or I dare say it’s a historical issue where they have maybe in the past sent them and they haven’t been published … but that’s long before my time,” said Stubbings. “Personally, in my time, I have never not printed a letter.” Critic notes that the students who made the claims were not able to provide any specific letters that had gone unpublished by Canta.

In regards to Canta's decision not to publish letters in the issue following the decision, Stubbings said this was due to the fact that this was the last issue of the semester. He said, “It wasn’t a political decision, it was more like a ‘we’re not getting many letters in, should we just scrap it and do something completely different for the last edition for the semester?’”

Stubbings further added, “A lot of people feel that Canta’s on [UCSA’s] side since Canta is controlled by the UCSA … People think that their letters wouldn’t get printed so they don’t even send them in … [However,] the reality is not that at all.”