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You are here: Home / Massachusetts / UMass President Bodyslams Student Author over Tillman Piece

UMass President Bodyslams Student Author over Tillman Piece

by Bryan Strawser · Apr 30, 2004

Yesterday’s Boston Globe reports on this shit from the left:

A college newspaper columnist who wrote that NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman “got what was coming to him” when he was killed in Afghanistan triggered a furor at the University of Massachusetts yesterday, drawing hundreds of angry responses from across the country and a scathing statement from Jack M. Wilson, new president of the University of Massachusetts.

Writing in the UMass-Amherst Daily Collegian, graduate student Rene Gonzalez, called Tillman “a `GI Joe’ guy who got what was coming to him.”

Tillman, who gave up a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after Sept. 11, was killed in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan last week.

“That was not heroism; it was prophetic idiocy,” Gonzalez wrote. His piece, which ran on Wednesday, was paired with a second column praising Tillman’s heroism.

[…]

The controversy roused Wilson, named president of the UMass system a month ago. Wilson issued a statement yesterday recognizing Gonzalez’s right to free speech, but called his comments “a disgusting, arrogant, and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country.”

Wilson called on Gonzalez to apologize to Tillman’s family and friends. Gonzalez did not reply to phone and e-mail messages yesterday.

Only in my state…

Filed Under: Massachusetts, Military

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