The editor-in-chief of Carnegie Mellon University's student newspaper, The Tartan, said he will suspend operations tomorrow because of public protests over a racial slur in the newspaper's April Fool's Day edition.

John Beale, Post-Gazette Protesters pray on the CMU campus at the beginning of a demonstration against a racial slur that appeared in the CMU Tartan student newspaper on April Fools Day. Click photo for larger image.

Editor-in-Chief Alex Meseguer couldn't apologize enough yesterday to an angry crowd of CMU students who had gathered to demonstrate against him and his newspaper.

"I don't blame you for feeling this way," he told the crowd of about 75 students, most of whom were black, as they formed a semi-circle around him and CMU's landmark painted fence outside the University Center.

"The Tartan has committed a grave error, one that threatens our mission, our members and our very existence."

Meseguer has fired cartoonist Bob Rost, who drew the strip in which a goat uses a racial slur to brag to a mouse that he had hit a black person on a bike. Meseguer said he and Managing Editor Jim Puls, who signed off on that page, are considering resigning. All are white.

The April Fool's Day edition of The Tartan also includes graphic depictions of female genitalia, as well as poems about raping a teacher and mutilating a woman with an ice skate.

Meseguer explained to the crowd yesterday that the racial slur had been allowed into print accidentally because fatigue had impaired the editors' judgment. He promised he was taking measures to prevent anything similar from happening again.

But the demands of the campus community, black students said, go beyond an apology or even Meseguer's resignation. They want to reform the stigma and ignorance on campus that once prompted a student to ask Tommy Taylor, an African-American senior majoring in electrical and computer engineering and public policy, whether he could properly pronounce the word "ask."

"Step by step and only through such mass efforts like this will we as a race gradually break the image that every black person is a modern-day minstrel show, sex addict, drug dealer, thug, or a rapper who cares about nothing more than his 'bling-bling,' " said Taylor. "We are not all illegitimate fathers and mothers, incapable of speaking proper English and devoid of all higher-level rational thought."

Rachel Gross, a sophomore majoring in business and technical writing who attended yesterday's rally, said she was shocked that people are still so ignorant of others' feelings.

"As a Jew, I'm outraged that something like this would happen on this campus, at a school that prides itself on diversity," Gross said. "It's unbelievable."

To review the accuracy, relevancy and effect on the campus of future editions of The Tartan, Meseguer and the administration plan a content review board that includes Dean of Student Affairs Michael Murphy, journalism professor Thomas O'Boyle, Vice Provost for Education Indira Nair and Gloria Hill, director of the Carnegie Mellon Action Project, a support service for African-American, Native American and Hispanic students.

The Tartan also will appoint an ethics manager to oversee general operating procedures and to act as an ombudsman, or representative to the community, Meseguer said.

Murphy said he and the university's president, Jared Cohon, condemn The Tartan's use of the slur.

"We all make mistakes and people err in judgment, but this cannot be tolerated," Murphy said. "The Tartan is sitting in judgment of itself ... the administration will also sit in judgment of The Tartan and the students involved in this."

The demonstrators asked not only for suspending publication of the newspaper but also for the resignation of its five-member editorial board. They also want all of the students responsible for allowing the slur to be printed to be suspended or expelled.

The paper's editors receive a small stipend for each issue -- Meseguer is paid $63 a week from advertising revenue. The April Fool's Day edition, however, was the first in two years to be supported by student activities money. The staff received $2,500 in student fees to produce the 12-page spoof edition, which did not contain any ads.

The demonstrators also demanded to know the real name of the cartoonist, who signed the offending comic strip under the pseudonym Edwin Hazelton.

"We want to know. We want to know. We want accountability," sophomore engineering student Kirstin Oswald told Meseguer. "Give us a name."

Meseguer looked over to a pale, slim student, who stepped forward. The crowd, already tightened in a knot around them, leaned closer.

"My name is Bob. I drew the comic strip," said Bob Rost. "It doesn't represent my personal views -- it was intended as humor about the people who actually think that way."

"It wasn't funny," one man in the crowd answered.

"I'm sorry it missed the mark," Rost said, looking down at the ground.

"I guess lynching was funny, too," another man said.

Rost backed away and refused to answer reporters' questions about himself.

Oswald later said she was unimpressed by Meseguer's apology and by his promises that nothing like the slur would happen again. He and Rost apologized, but their lack of emotion made the apologies seem insincere, she said.

"I'm disappointed in America's future," Oswald said. "I'm disappointed these are the people who are going to be leading us."