Letter From the Editor: On the Profanity in Friday's Paper

On Friday, a profanity was inserted into the print edition and briefly into the online edition of The Sun news story, “After Cuts, Department Saves Critical Languages,” to identify Prof. Walter Cohen. On behalf of The Sun, I would like to issue my strongest apologies for this error. This sort of language has no place in our paper.

The paper was vandalized Thursday night as The Sun celebrated its last night of publication for the semester. About 150 people gathered at our offices during this particular occasion. This is something that The Sun has been doing every year since I first joined. We have always held this event without incident, and we are appalled that someone would attempt to compromise our integrity by sneaking this curse word into the paper.

Like a normal night at The Sun, the computers on which we design the pages of our paper were left unattended for brief instances. During one of these instances, someone added the word to the page. The Sun works hard to ensure that these types of mistakes do not happen and we meticulously edit and proof every page. Unfortunately, this particular error was inserted after we had finished proofing the page and making corrections.

I am incredibly sorry for this error. I am especially sorry since I know that the word is used in many instances in a derogatory way against women. The word is vulgar, and I can only issue the strongest condemnation of the person who put that word into the paper. Moving forward, we will be reconsidering whether we can host these sort of events at our office and taking steps to ensure that this type of error never happens again.

— J.C.F.