Lasaga: we have the right to know

By Kate Mason

O.J. Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Antonio Lasaga. Welcome to America.

Amidst all the complaining and crying about how the press is so unfair and so sick and so sensational and how prying is immature and futile, I'd like to venture an amazing new possibility: the press is good.

This bold new theory, first introduced about 220 years ago by a bunch of unruly revolutionaries, has traditionally been the most treasured, most passionately defended right to be granted to the American people. Suddenly, the people could criticize their leaders. Suddenly, the people could find out if their president may have been sleeping with an intern, or if their trusted role model may have been sexually exploiting young children. Suddenly, the people didn't have to rely on said leaders to offer the information they sought. They could search for it on their own. They could find out information that the leaders did not want them to know, and they could tell other people about such information. Suddenly, the people had the right to pry.

In his letter to the editor in The Yale Daily News [11/11/98], Daniel Fingerman, SY '00, claimed that because former Saybrook Master Antonio Lasaga is a "brilliant scholar" and a "dynamic and spirited leader," journalistic "prying" is wrong. What Fingerman fails to realize, however, is that Lasaga's apparent good character is completely irrelevant. Journalism is not just for bad guys. In fact, stories about bad guys doing bad things are certainly less interesting and less newsworthy than stories of good guys doing bad things. If Mother Teresa had been investigated for murder, wouldn't we have wanted to know?

Investigations are news. And, amazingly, interesting investigations are interesting news.

In yet another letter to the editor [YDN, 11/12/98], Michael Kavanagh, DC '00, and Simon Rodberg, DC '00, claimed that Yalies should "set an example" by refusing to report on the FBI investigation of Lasaga. They should instead fill the newspapers with "academic policy" and "New Haven security." As fascinating as daily updates on the poor quality of physics lab supplies and the number of students who use 2-WALK to get home safely from Payne Whitney may be, I think it's safe to say that even Lasaga himself would agree that the sudden resignation and federal criminal investigation of a respected Yale professor makes for better news. However much we may like Lasaga, however brilliant or respected he may be, he is being investigated. And whether he is guilty or not, the investigation, in and of itself, is most definitely news.

Our leaders do not deserve special treatment just because they are respected. If anything, they deserve to be held up to the strictest scrutiny possible. To cut them a break, to leave them alone just because they are Yale professors, would cause our founding fathers to turn over in their graves. It would set a dangerous precedent that could destroy an accomplishment brought about by hundreds of years of journalistic perseverance: the right to question authority.

Dean Richard Brodhead's, BR '68, GRD '72, implication that being "mature" means failing to pry is insulting and disturbing. His belief that Yale students do not have the right to know—that mature and intelligent people should not seek out the truth about an issue that deeply affects their lives and their school, that the Yale administration needs to go to such lengths to keep students in the dark that they had to learn from a television show what was happening under their own roof—brings up the question of whether Brodhead believes we students have the right to do anything at all.

Kate Mason is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles.

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