KYW Newsradio Team Coverage
KYW's Ian Bush reports officials at St. Joseph's University are apologizing for the April Fool's parody edition of the student paper, which called Cardinal Rigali "gay" and compared Jesuits to Nazis.
St. Joe's communications director Harriet Goodheart says lampoon or not, the content of "The Squawk," written annually by staff at the student newspaper, is unacceptable:
"It was material that was deeply offensive to the entire university community."
The issue was published March 28th as a supplement to the regular paper, "The Hawk," which nets several thousand readers weekly.
Goodheart says The Hawk editor wrote an apology for the antics in this week's issue, and university president, Fr. Timothy Lannon, who was featured in a spoof that said he endorsed condoms, himself expressed regret to the Archdiocese:
"He has apologized to the Cardinal personally, and it's my understanding that the editor-in-chief of The Hawk will also be personally sending an apology to the Cardinal."
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese says Cardinal Rigali accepts the apology and appreciates how directly the university has handled the matter.
KYW’s John McDevitt reports many students here at St. Joe's say it was an April fool’s joke, and the University needs to lighten up.
Among them, Bobby Melonowski:
"Yeah, I think they're overreacting. They do this every year, The Squawk, so they should expect it to be funny and have different things in there. They should leave it up to the kids to decide what to put in there. It's basically for all the students, anyway. I mean, if the majority of them think it's funny, I think there shouldn't be a problem with it."
Another student says the parody was inappropriate, and an apology was necessary.
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