Pennsylvania Students Outraged by Comic Strip in Student-run Paper

By: E&P Staff Students at a western Pennsylvanian school are outraged at a comic strip that appeared in their student-run newspaper last Friday.

Keith Knight's cartoon in The Rocket has angered many at Slippery Rock University, a college about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh with approximately 8,000 students.

?The K Chronicles? comic strip featured a black man hanging from a noose saying, ?You're doing this because I'm black, aren't you?? while white characters accuse him of playing the race card.

The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that Knight himself is African-American. To some, though, that doesn't make a difference.

?We don't care if it was a black, white, orange, purple, pink person who wrote this article,? Audrey Foreback, a sophomore, told local radio station WYTV. ?They should not have been allowed to print it and publish it throughout the school. It's just wrong.?

Students aren't the only ones who have something to say about Knight's controversial drawing.
?It certainly ripped at the hearts and souls of many many people on this campus, not just members of our minority groups,? said Rita Abent, the Executive Director of Public Relations at Slippery Rock University, to WYTV.

Members of the campus NAACP chapter and Black Action Society met with The Rocket staff on Monday night, and a peaceful march and protest through campus is planned for Thursday afternoon. WYTV also reported that some students showed up at the student center with nooses around their necks in protest of the cartoon.

Knight responded to critics of his strip on his blog, saying that campus uproars over his cartoons are ?becoming a yearly ritual.?
The editors and advisers of the paper had no comment, only telling WYTV that the comic is nationally syndicated and has been included in their paper for the past three years.