The story underneath this one is about her getting fired for writing this article

It’s sad, but racial profiling is necessary for our safety
JILLIAN BANDES
LICENSED TO JILL
September 13, 2005
www.dailytarheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/13/4326450119685
I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.

I don’t care if they’re being inconvenienced. I don’t care if it seems as though their rights are being violated.

I care about my life. I care about the lives of my family and friends.

And I care about the lives of the Arabs and Arab Americans I’m privileged to know and study with.

They’re some of the brightest, kindest people I’ve ever met.

Tragically, they’re also members of an ethnicity that is responsible for almost every act of terror committed against the West in the recent past.

And in the wake of the anniversary of 9/11, I think it’s important to remember not only those who died, but how they died, why they died and where we stand now compared to where we stood then.

Four years and two days ago, we stood somewhere between apathy and ignorance. Sure, there were heinous acts of terrorism being committed in far-away lands, and sure, there was always the threat that some psychopath might do something.

After all, we’re the generation of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and Columbine. The news was littered with coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nerve gas on Japanese subways and terror in the Balkans.

But those attacks weren’t in the same buildings we toured on our eighth-grade class trips.

They didn’t kill 3,000 of our relatives.

They weren’t in our face.

So Bushie waged war on ’em. He set out to knock the evil off its axis, and we’re still there, duking it out.

And for good reason. You can debate a lot of things about post-9/11 foreign policy, but one thing you can’t debate is that taking out terrorists — or blatant human-rights violators — is a good thing.

You also can’t debate that of the 19 hijackers on those planes, all 19 were Arab.

And you can’t debate that while most Arabs are not terrorists, sadly, most terrorists are indeed Arab.

Given this combination, I want some kind of security.

Done in a professional, conscientious manner, racial profiling is more likely to get the bad guys than accosting my 12-year-old pipsqueak of a brother on his way to summer camp.

When asked if she had a boyfriend, Ann Coulter once said that any time she had a need for physical intimacy, she would simply walk through an airport’s security checkpoint.

I want Arabs to get sexed up like nothing else.

And Arab students at UNC don’t seem to think that’s such a bad idea.

“(Racial profiling) really doesn’t bother me,” said Sherief Khaki, a first-generation Egyptian-American and representative of the UNC-CH Arabic Club.

“So a couple of hours are wasted. Big deal.”

Said Muhammad Salameh, a junior biology major: “I can accept it, even if I don’t like it. I don’t want to die.”

Professor Nasser Isleem, a man for whom I have complete and utter respect after merely two weeks of sitting in his Arabic 101 class, said, “Let them search.”

“It depends on how I’m stopped, but if it is done in a professional manner … ”

Then he nodded.

“There were Muslims in those buildings, too.”

Some people say that racial profiling will make terrorism a self-fulfilling prophecy, or that it’s somehow unfair to designate certain individuals as being more likely to commit an act of terror than another.

They’re wrong.

If 19 blond-haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian Jews had plowed into the World Trade Center with two jumbo jets, I would demand to be interrogated every time I browsed Cheapflights.com.

After each interrogation, I would offer the official a cup of joe, then heartedly thank him for his efforts. And I would not be any more inclined to blow up innocent civilians as a result of it.

Neither would Sherief Khaki. Or Muhammad Salameh. Or Nasser Isleem.

Nearly every Arab American I’ve spoken with has done nothing but condemn the evil that was done just four years ago, and at least tacitly recognize that some profiling is necessary.

I have enough confidence in my country’s imperfect but steadfast law enforcement systems to carry out such profiling the way it should be done: in a professional and thorough manner, without going down the slippery slope of pointless and disrespectful encroachment on the livelihood or decorum of everyday Arabs and Arab Americans.

Stop, as Coulter advises, treating racial profiling like the Victorians treated sex — by not discussing the topic unless you’re recoiling in horror at the practice.

Embrace the race.


Carolina Journal Exclusives
Daily Tar Heel Columnist Fired
Jillian Bandes' column on post-9/11 airport security caused ouster
Shannon Blosser
September 15, 2005
carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=2780
CHAPEL HILL – A UNC-Chapel Hill student was fired from The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s student newspaper, Wednesday after she wrote a column on airport security that maintained Arabs should be “stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.”

Jillian Bandes, a junior from Florida, was the author of the column that ran in Tuesday’s edition of the school paper. She says she was just stating her opinion on airport security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was never given an opportunity from The Daily Tar Heel editors to defend herself.

In an interview with the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy she said the column was based on a trip she took to Israel sponsored by The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a Washington, D.C., think tank that attempts to educate the public on terrorism-related issues. She also included comments from Arab students and a professor who supported racial profiling.

“I don’t care if they’re being inconvenienced,” Bandes wrote. “I don’t care if it seems as though their rights are being violated. I care about my life. I care about the lives of my family and friends. And I care about the lives of the Arabs and Arab-Americans I’m privileged to know and study with. They’re some of the brightest, kindest people I’ve ever met.”

After running a letter to the editor Wednesday from the Muslim Students Association denouncing the column and questioning the validity of some of the comments in the article, Chris Coletta, opinion editor for The Daily Tar Heel, met with Bandes Wednesday afternoon to inform her of her termination. Bandes said she was never given an opportunity to write a column apologizing to offended students, a practice that has precedent with the paper. She said that was going to be the topic of her next column.

Bandes was fired after writing just three columns for The Daily Tar Heel.

“His mind was already made up,” Bandes said of Coletta. “There was really no contest.”

Coletta refused to go into detail about the firing saying only that, “It’s unfortunate. I wish it didn’t have to happen.” He also said that his only public comments on the situation would be made on his Daily Tar Heel blog, The Bullhorn, the editor’s blog and a column published Thursday.

The students Bandes quoted in the column claimed that she misrepresented their comments. Bandes said the quotes were accurate but admits to using hyperbole in her own comments to make her points in the column. But said that she didn’t believe her actions were outside the bounds of journalism standards.

Bandes said the column began as a comment on the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. But as she wrote the column, Bandes said it evolved into something more and she decided to focus on racial profiling’s role in fighting terrorism. She told her sources that she was looking at Sept. 11 and racial profiling when she interviewed them.

For the most part, Bandes said she received comments from students who supported her right to say what she wrote, not necessarily the ideas that she supported. She said she also received some “profane e-mails.”

When asked if she could rewrite the column would she write the same way, Bandes responded, “Nope.”

“I wanted to get people talking,” Bandes said. “I did that. It also got me fired.”

Yep, good read. I agree.

More thought police

First: Did she find another job?

Second: We should hire Israeli "security consultants". They've got a good track record.

How can you be "fired" from a student newspaper?

Quoted: How can you be "fired" from a student newspaper?

You no longer are on the staff, and no longer get course credit. Slap on the wrist, sure, but if the writer is serious about pursuing journalism as a career, this will have a profound effect on her future.

I'm sure she's already been contacted with an intern position at Fox!

Quoted: I'm sure she's already been contacted with an intern position at Fox!

Only if she is hot!

Yeah, thats healthy and productive.  If you don't like what someone says, shut them up.  Don't bother to rebut their argument.  Censorship is the way to go.  

With that said, I think she should have realized what was going to happen if she wrote something like that in such a bombastic manner.

Quoted: Quoted: I'm sure she's already been contacted with an intern position at Fox! Only if she is hot!

She has a pic at the link at the top of this page if someone wants to post it
(I don't think I will need a botd for my title, but she is not too bad)

Here is her pic

Hmm interesting it was an opinion piece, and she gave just that. Opinion pieces fall under different rules then actual "news" articals. We had a couple issues over "opinion" pieces when I worked on the college paper, our staff decided that hey it's an opinion piece, if the writer gets ripped for what they write, thats on them, not us as long as they don't libal or slander anyone fine take yer lumps and learn yer lessons.

As a former editor myself and having to deal with shit like this I really don't think there was anything wrong with her opinion piece. If anything a copy editor, and the opinion page editor should be getting ripped a new one for not spiking it if there was such concern about backlash for the piece. In most papers the story will go through one or two copy editors and then the page editor. In our case it went through a copy editor, the page editor and then the managing editor before it was placed on the page. There was a way to stop this before it was ever printed, a copy editor, the page editor,  the managing editor and the EIC all let it go. The reporter should not have been canned IMO.

They could have also had her re-write the piece to "tone it down" if they were worried. The reporter should not have been fired for an opinion piece, especially IF the quotes are accurate and if she's a good reporter, they will be on tape and verifiable.

If I was that editor I'd be worried about a lawsuit.

taggage

Good article. Forwarded that one on.