A student at the Walter Cronkite School will be staging a silent protest Thursday on Taylor Mall after a recent conversation she held with a college dean concerning the obstacles Muslim students face in professional journalism careers.
The event, hosted by Shaima Shahin, a journalism junior, in conjunction with two other students, will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to protest what she said was a remark by Assistant Dean Mark Lodato that she would not be hired as an anchor of the school’s capstone news program, Cronkite NewsWatch, due to her headscarf.
Cronkite School Dean Chris Callahan, who met with both Lodato and Shahin following the incident, said no such statement was made and Shahin’s account is factually incorrect.
The protest itself has sparked conversation among students –- perhaps most prominently on a public Facebook event page created to rally support –- about the nature of the conversation and diversity in the Cronkite School.
The school was recently fully accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, meeting all nine standards, including diversity, exceptionally well. In 2005, the Cronkite School failed to meet diversity and governance standards.
Despite the facts of the meeting between Shahin and Lodato being disputed by both sides in what has become a “he said, she said” encounter, the planned protest has struck a chord on the Downtown campus as well as with ASU students from other campuses. Many offering Shahin support believe her discussion touches on sensitive issues relating to minority students experiencing discrimination. Other students have said they feel what is unfolding is not a discrimination issue but rather being billed as one to attract attention. Still others said there are other ways to handle the matter.
Shahin’s brother, Oday Shahin, said other students who say they have felt discriminated against have come forward to support the protest.
Jason Chacon, a journalism senior who has been involved in Cronkite NewsWatch, said he would attend a counter-protest if one were to be held, but he believed the whole situation was so polarized that there would be no real results from the protest, particularly a silent one.
“People are talking about it, but it’s not a debate because in a debate there can be a winner and in this there really is none,” Chacon said. “It’s not like something where people are open to it … No one’s going to be convinced of anything because, from what I’ve seen, there’s just too much militance about it.”
Shahin planned the event to be silent in order to reflect “the silence imposed on minority students who face discrimination.” In a press release, Shahin said she is looking for an apology and an admission of the statement from Lodato, as well as for the Cronkite School to take steps to prevent other similar incidents from occurring.
The controversy circling the protest over the past week has attracted the attention of ASU students on other campuses as well.
Adeline Hill, a junior majoring in women and gender studies on the Tempe campus, has become actively involved in organizing and promoting the protest.
“The Cronkite School has made a habit of discriminating against students of minority status, and then justifying their actions because the mainstream media also does,” Hill said in the press release, which she helped write.
Many students have used the Facebook event page to sound off about race in general, discrimination and the effectiveness of staging a protest about a private and unrecorded meeting held between a student and school administrator.
“People don’t stand for anything anymore,” wrote Noor Saied, a political science student, on the Facebook group’s wall. “Stand up for your beliefs and what is right regardless of whether you will land a job or not.”
While Oday Shahin and other protesters said the event would allow students to learn the empowerment tools they have when tackling discrimination, Chacon said the cause of the protest was not a discrimination issue.
“That’s a word that’s as dangerous to throw out there in day to day conversation as it is to actually practice in real life,” he said.
More than 200 people have responded as attending the protest on Facebook with nearly 200 listed as not attending, at the time of this article’s publication.
Shahin originally met with Lodato on April 21 and discussed challenges facing Muslim journalists, primarily whether wearing a headscarf would hinder her career, according to her press release and Callahan’s account.
Callahan said Lodato went on to elaborate that a headscarf would not affect her assignments in an educational setting, but Shahin said in the release that Lodato said he would not make Shahin head anchor of Cronkite NewsWatch.
Shahin said she did not apply for Cronkite NewsWatch for the upcoming fall semester but met with Lodato to discuss anchoring in a hypothetical sense, according to a comment she posted on the Facebook event’s wall and later confirmed to the Downtown Devil.
One post by Siera Lambrecht, a journalism student who has been on the NewsWatch staff, reflected curiosity as to why she was discussing an anchoring position at that time. NewsWatch members said anchor positions are typically chosen through auditions in the second week of each semester.
Shahin’s brother Oday Shahin, a computer information systems senior and co-president of the ASU Coalition for Human Rights, joined her in the discussion with Callahan and Lodato and is helping to host the protest.
Lodato sent an email to Shahin about an hour after the conversation transpired, after receiving a call from someone wondering about the program’s policy on anchors with headscarves, Callahan said. The email by Lodato said an anchoring decision would come down to anchoring ability and that he wanted to “make sure there’s no confusion” about what was said during the meeting.
Callahan said he doesn’t know what the protest is trying to accomplish and that Shahin’s statements are factually incorrect.
“She’s saying that wearing a headscarf would be an impediment in the Cronkite NewsWatch setting, and we’re telling her that it wouldn’t be,” Callahan said. “I’m not exactly sure what the remedy is here.”
Oday and other Shahin supporters disagree, however, and are hoping Thursday’s protest prompts an apology from Lodato and the Cronkite School, saying that the qualified apologies given thus far have not been enough.
“They kept giving us the line ‘I apologize for confusion,’ (but) we aren’t confused,” Oday said.
Contact the reporter at vpelham@asu.edu
