I feel as though I should explain why my column was pulled last week. Rhaason Mitchell, the African-American managing editor, felt the need to censor me, the Caucasian columnist, because he felt my column was unprofessional.

That’s right. It is a cold day in hell. A black man censored a white man. I am living proof that the racial tides have changed direction!

Everyone relax. Rhaason is my good friend, and I’m sure he finds humor in the previous paragraph.

What was unprofessional about it, you may ask? The pulled column made reference to a certain female student who wrote a letter to the editor asking me if I was raised by a pack of wolves.

I was informed that it is okay to single out Marv Albert, Dennis Rodman or that joke Committee on Women. It’s also okay for a student to pinpoint me and my character and question the upbringing skills of my parents. But if I refer to that student in response, that is unprofessional.

It’s professional to tell you stick a daisy in your ass in public. It’s professional enough to tell you to screw upon the footsteps of Jack Trice.

But to respond to a letter and to identify the author of the letter, that’s way unprofessional. So unprofessional that the so-called liberal college paper, the Daily, deemed it to be unfit for its paper.

So I’ll just bend over and take my licks. That’s the way it goes, I guess. This still brings me to the question of what is professional. This question goes way beyond the Daily.

I believe the problem was that I have been labeled sexist by many people, and the column responded to a female writer. I succeeded in making her look like the fool that she is. A female copy editor stepped completely out of her job description to point out what she believed was an unprofessional column. Had the writer or the letter been male, I doubt there would have been a problem. I may have bad taste, but I understand my job description and my profession.

Actually, my anger has settled and I have no remaining qualms with the Daily. I just have to ask this question.

Where can I find the universal guidelines to what is and what isn’t professional? How is this judged?

If we go back to the basis of what the media was built on, we find the First Amendment.

The First Amendment would support my argument that my column was just as useful to the public as a political cartoon. It would have been found humorous to many, while disgusting to equally as many.

The Daily’s argument is over taste, not whether or not the column could have legally run. Nobody wanted to answer phone calls about people bitching about me, which is understandable. But it seems as though freedom of speech was disregarded for personal opinion. To be honest, I understand that I offend quite a few people every Tuesday. I also make quite a few people laugh.

Where is the line drawn between what is professional and what is legal? This question should be proposed to every paper in the country. I can make a promise to those of you who read my column. I shall continue to write what I write. I refuse to change the direction in which my column is pointed. So if it gets pulled each and every week, then I’ll have to deal with that.

As far as my football prediction for this week: Idle 21, ISU 45. We’re going to get a win, baby. I can feel it.

We’ll talk later.

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Chad Calek is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Persia.