Under Pressure, YU Site Pulls Sex Column
UPDATE: December 8, 12 p.m.: Following a meeting with school administrators, YU Beacon has restored the column to its site. A Beacon editor is telling New Voices that the publication will no longer be subsidized by the university.
Sure, sex columns are staples in college newspapers — spaces where student scribes describe, often in lascivious detail, the bedroom (or dorm room) propensities of their peers.
A recent column published in Yeshiva University’s co-ed newspaper, YU Beacon, was relatively tame by comparison: The anonymous piece matter-of-factly describes a sexual encounter between two students, after which the writer comes to the conclusion that she “made a stupid mistake.”
But as of Wednesday afternoon, the Beacon’s editors-in chief, Simi Lampert and Toviah Moldwin, had pulled the piece at the request of university administrators, with whom they are planning to meet. Apparently some on campus, and in the wider Orthodox community, found the piece too racy for a publication that receives money from Modern Orthodoxy’s flagship institution.
A spokesman for the university could not immediately be reached for comment.
On the page where the essay once lived is a letter from Lampert and Moldwin that implies that the future of the Beacon, not just the article, is in jeopardy. “We want any decisions regarding the Beacon’s fate to be based purely on fact, and not on bad feelings,” they wrote. (Lampert reiterated that point in an interview with New Voices, the publication of the Jewish Student Press Service.)
The Beacon left in place the lively, polarizing debate that ensued in the comments section.
But you don’t have to wait for a resolution to read the column in question. Lampert gave New Voices, permission to reprint the piece, “How Do I Even Begin To Explain This?” here.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
