Saint John — This week, UNBSJ’s student newspaper The Baron continued its audacious trend of featuring the work of disreputable writers when they allowed a reporter from the infamous entertainment website BuzzFeed to contribute several short pieces to their print publication.
The articles were sent to them via email from BuzzFeed author Barry Ruffalo, who explained that the stories were “just too similar” to other content on the site that week, and so he was looking for some other place to pawn them off. The content itself left The Baron staff understandably sickened. It was only after two days of intense deliberation that the paper ultimately decided to run the material.
“We mustn’t shy away from content like this,” said Baron editor Felicity Moreno in a written statement. “However abhorrent, this stuff exists. People you know are reading it. Your friends, your family. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.”
Prefaced by a brief disclaimer explaining their commitment to free speech, the paper printed a total of four such articles, ranging in tone from “LOL” to “WTF,” leaving many students shocked and angered by what they read.
“I filled out a quiz entitled ‘Which Boy Meets World Character are You?’” said second-year business student Thomas Daro. “At the end it said I got ‘Eric Matthews.’ Eric! Are you kidding me? I’ve never been so offended in my entire life.”
Others were left simply confused.
“I didn’t really get the one called ‘15 Times the ’90s Brought the Noms,’” said Kelsey Angus, a third-year engineering student. “It was basically just a collection of gifs. I don’t know why they thought that would work in print.”
While Moreno sympathizes with students who are outraged by the material, she reiterated her position that it is important to show what kind of content is out there, so that we can work together to rid the world of such horrors and attempt to build a better society.
“If these articles start trending, however,” she said, ominously, “then you know it’s too late for us.”