Dear Puget Sound Community,
Last week, the Combat Zone ran a satirical announcement about a bear-trapping trip from Puget Sound Outdoors (PSO), the school’s outdoor adventure organization. This week, I’ve received over 80 letters, texts, emails, tweets and HEY YOUs alerting me to the fact that the article was offensive and that I should go straight to Hell (which is about three miles south of Greeley, Colo.). In addition to complaints about the tone of the article—which implied that the school’s outdoorsy students are nothing more than passive-aggressive faux-hippies who only like nature because it’s cool and who use outdoorsiness as a pretext for brand worship rather than for the transcendental value that nature affords us—students felt that we displayed lies as if they were truth, because PSO does not offer bear-trapping trips. Furthermore, it was wrong of us to think so.
We here at The Trail and especially at the Combat Zone like to stir things up on campus, but when the articles unfairly portray people belonging to certain groups, we’ve gone to far. We want to open a dialogue of understanding on campus, and making fun of PSO—no matter how light-heartedly —does nothing but incite feelings of anger, shame and memories of the 1999 buyout of North Face by Jewish American Princess, Inc. So, in the spirit of diversity and letting all voices be heard, the Combat Zone is devoting the entirety of this week’s issue to pieces written by students who are active in the PSO organization. We apologize to anyone we offended last week, and hope that this page can keep the conversation flowing and open a new chapter in campus tolerance. Enjoy.
Also, we are sorry for what we said about bulimics. And the gays. And the Krauts.
Sincerely,
Stumpy Joe Dargoniw
Editor, Combat Zone
