In the past few months I have increasingly learned much in the way of “intent” versus “impact.”
I have learned that the two don’t always have the same effect, that they have the ability to be mutually exclusive, that they don’t always lend themselves to a logical cause-and-effect relationship.
And – in light of this knowledge/revelation – I would like to call your attention to the Oct. 3rd photograph on page three situated next to the article about the Poitier student forum.
In this photograph, five black students are posed next to Poitier – the DC picture only shows three: Tabari Stillman, Yorke G. Fryer, and Courtney Hampton.
Two out of the three students – Fryer and Hampton – are misidentified as Cornelius Smith and Jerrika D. Hinton … these students look nothing like each other and yet The Daily Campus has confused them.
What makes this occurrence even more bizarre/questionable is the fact that the photographer took down the students’ names, along with clothing descriptions.
Either this is yet another case of daily campus (yes, I meant the lower case…find the deeper meaning) incompetence or Theyalllookalike Syndrome.
Hmm … intent versus impact. The intention of The Daily Campus may have been to publish a photograph of students with the world-renowned actor and activist, Sidney Poitier. What may have come across [the impact] was a picture of Black students with a world renowned activist and actor.
Yet still, DC‘s intention may have been to show a photograph of inspired black Meadows students with an artistic leader.
What resulted was a group of black kids – cutout, rearranged, misnamed – leaving a dreadfully ironic taste in a reader’s mouth due to Poitier’s comments on race only a day prior, the fruit of that being this letter.
Jerrika D. Hinton
Senior theatre major