Letter: Samuel Schrage on exploitation

Dear Editor:

I have contacted you about something I read recently published a short while ago about controversies being used specifically (or at least a significant tactic) to increase readership, in which my name was brought up. I have no qualms that this Mr. James Robertson wrote a letter to the editor, and I applaud him for speaking his mind.

However, at one point he wrote: “[The Eagle had been] gleefully exploiting his profanity for a few months.”

I have two issues to which I would like to draw your attention. The first point is the term “profanity” and how it was used in the context of the entire letter instead of this sentence. I believe a more suitable word would be “material.”

Whether they agreed with me or didn’t, I doubt anyone picked up a copy and flipped to the Op/Ed pages to only read vulgarity. The short version – I didn’t just curse – I had points and opinions to bring to the table (or at least I hope so!)

The second point I’d make is more for grievous to me personally and to others around me; the term “exploit” used in a way that, to me, carried with it the message the idea that I was just a puppet on strings held by Savanna (which, I might add would be impossible without a friggin’ step ladder. I’m 6’3”. Savanna’s, like, 4-foot-nothin’. She’s not tall enough to even hold the damn strings!)

The idea of me being exploited is just… well… wrong! You, The Eagle staff, kick journalistic tail, and you are a collection of intelligent, competent students committed to a set of ideals that I’ve rarely ever seen waver. This staff, and ultimately, the paper, has strong ethics and qualities like courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit. I was not exploited. If anything, I exploited the paper to get my rants into the public in a respectable medium. Let’s face it, if I was shouting half the shit I wrote about in front of the C-Store, I’d be taken away quite quickly for a nice little chat with someone in a lab coat, given sedatives, and put in a padded room.

I applaud, once again, Robertson for speaking up and sitting in the cold chair of peer-reviewed opinion. Good for him! But I was not exploited, and if I actually was, for that to be true, everyone must have been so committed to the cover up, I didn’t deserve to know in the first place.

—Samuel Schrage,
former opinion editor