Spotlights beat down on the three Tartan newspaper staff members sitting on stage before a crowd of fellow Carnegie Mellon University students. Soon enough, so did the criticism.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette The Tartan editors, from left, Jim Puls, managing editor; Bob Rost, comics staff; and Alex Meseguer, editor-in-chief, answer questions at a forum on the Tartan's April Fools' Day edition yesterday at McConomy Auditorium on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. Click photo for larger image.

The Tartan's April Fools' Day edition, which included a cartoon with a racial slur and graphic poems about raping and mutilating women, was a failed attempt at satire, said Jenny Andrus, a graduate student in English.

As a rape victim, she said, she could hardly find words to describe how the poems made her feel.

"Why is violence against women funny?" Andrus asked Tartan Editor-in-Chief Alex Meseguer, Managing Editor Jim Puls and cartoonist Bob Rost at last night's forum at CMU's McConomy Hall to discuss the special issue. "There aren't words for it. There are only tears."

Andrus was one of more than 150 CMU students who attended last night's emotional discussion about the April Fools' edition. The newspaper, called The Natrat (Tartan spelled backwards), created a firestorm of criticism that led to the firing of Rost.

Meseguer announced last night that he will take a leave of absence for at least the remainder of the semester at the request of The Tartan's other staff members. Meseguer has said he did not see the comic strip before it was published and that other editors failed to stop it because their judgment was impaired by fatigue.

Last night, he encouraged students who want to improve The Tartan to join its staff.

"The procedures for joining The Tartan are as simple as asking," Meseguer said. "We've never turned anyone away."

For now, however, the newspaper has stopped regular production through the end of the semester, except possibly for Spring Carnival and commencement issues.

No decision has been made about whether it will be publishing again for the fall semester, according to Meseguer.

Dean of Student Affairs Michael Murphy said last night that a content review commission -- whose members have not yet been chosen -- will decide whether to recommend punishment for Meseguer or other Tartan staff members.

Last night's forum, in which some members of the audience shouted down Meseguer, Puls and their defenders and others stormed from the room in anger, was one of the first steps toward a fuller discussion of issues such as race, gender, free speech and political correctness at CMU, Murphy said afterward.

"I don't know that it resolved anything, but it brought some things to the surface and I think that's important," he said. "It's one of many forums we're going to have."

During last night's discussion, members of the predominantly black audience said they were struggling to show the respect they didn't feel they'd received from the newspaper.

The slur Rost used, Puls approved and Meseguer missed brings with it 400 years of brutality against and enslavement of African-Americans, said sophomore design major Rigardo Rush.

"Do you understand what the word means? Do you understand how much baggage that carries? Because you haven't experienced it, you can't fathom how much pain and agony that causes," he said.

The Tartan's editors, despite apologizing, have said the April Fools' Day edition was satire and not meant to hurt anyone. Rost said he drew the first thing that came to mind in an attempt to keep with the spirit of the spoof newspaper, which had been an annual tradition.

Courtney Ricketts, a senior majoring in business and French, challenged the editors to accept the consequences of their exercise in free speech.

"There is a difference between having certain thoughts and writing them -- that's inciting violence," Ricketts said. "I'm not arguing semantics. I'm not arguing free speech. I'm just arguing responsibility."