I was editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, and I had two Hispanic writers on my staff. They were freshmen and new to the whole college thing, and they wandered into the office looking to experience extracurriculars. The thing was, they referred to each other as "Spic." Now, I remember distinctly looking at the two and asking them, "Are you sure y'all should be calling each other that?" or something to that effect, and they said, "Sure! In fact, we encourage YOU to call us "Spic," too." Well, being of the college mindset in one of the most tenuous racial demographics in the country, me and the officemates were thrilled, right? I mean, we thought we were subversive and all about the inside joke, so if two minorities were going to allow us to call them something derogative, well, who were we to be the morality police? Please.

So anyway, the two decide to write a column about getting involved in extracurricular activities. Which was fine, but they submit it with the hed, "What it's like to be a Spic in an all-white office." Well, my first instinct was, "Oh, absolutely not," but the rest of the gang was like, "Oh, c'mon! That's awesome! PLEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAASE?!?!?!" And I was still like, no, but then my graphics guy said, "Well, how about, "What it's like to be a Spic in an all-GRINGO office? Then the two racial slurs balance it out." For some reason, I thought that would be PERFECTLY acceptable and decided to run with it. After all, the column was going on page 11, so it's not like it was going to smack people in the ass or anything. And hell, do people even read the paper? People don't read us, I told myself.

Except that they DID, and wouldn't you know, the very day the issue came out, our student advisor came in and said, "We have a meeting with the Publications Board and members of the community next Monday, and you WILL be there," or again, something to that effect.

So, Monday rolls around, and we meet with the Pub board and five -- count 'em, FIVE -- members of the Hispanic community who were outraged that we used the word Spic in a headline. We debated, and basically, the Pub Board found that we were exercising freedom of speech and so on and so forth. And what did we do to repay the Pub board for allowing us to keep our positions? Banner headline, top of the fold, next issue:

"Cleaning up racism with Spic and Span."

Not only that, the whole issue was riddled with as many awful puns using the word "Spic" as we could possibly come up with in our sleep-deprived stupors during layout. Yeah, the Pub Board didn't love us too much for that one.

It might not have been as fun as a beer party, but hey! we take our victories where we can, right?