AMANDA DEDIE
News Editor
When you go to the school’s homepage and click “Start Your Journey,” the videos that were taken down last week — in response to various complaints made by Fredonia students — have been reposted.
The commercials feature Fredonia students working in the field that they’re studying for. Over that, the audio is of said students talking about the opportunities Fredonia has provided them. They discuss how the school got them to where they are — their first day in the real world, which is what the video intended to portray.
Instead, what stood out were the voice-overs used for the students who starred in the videos.
The videos were taken down but re-uploaded today, this time with the actor’s voices dubbed in over the videos instead of someone else’s.
Much of the controversy was aimed toward the commercial of senior Benji Soto, whose commercial had a Hispanic accent dubbed in over it. This sparked accusations of the school racially stereotyping students and the lack of integrity showed by Fredonia.
“Benji’s appearance alone wouldn’t reveal his ethnicity. He could be Italian, Greek, etc.,” said Mike Barone, director of marketing and communications for Fredonia. “Thus, using a person with a slight Latino accent would help leave no doubt in the viewer’s mind and hopefully help us advance in the diversity goals which have been publicly stated by our campus for years.”
Not only that, but the students also had to listen to, and sign off on, the recordings being put over their videos — and all the students approved, both of the decision to have voiceovers and of the voiceovers themselves.
Soto understands why students disagree with the voiceover tactic, but also believes that they are overreacting.
“I think it’s kind of unfair,” Soto said. “I think people are overreacting. I think they did an amazing job … It’s kind of sad to see, after investing so much [time and] resources, especially now that they’re scarce … that’s kind of unfortunate.”
Though the commercials were made with the best of intentions, the increasingly intense discussions around campus pushed the administration to take the videos down until the problem could be rectified..
“A full week went by following the launch, and then something surprising happened,” Barone said. “We received a couple of concerns by internal campus community members, who knew Benji, that the voice we used sounded ‘too’ Hispanic.”
“Given the tensions happening this [last] on some other campuses throughout the nation, our administration asked that we temporarily suspend the ads from the website until we could discuss it, to make sure nothing had been inadvertently done to offend anyone,” said Barone.
Whether or not the reasons behind the take-down were the result of overreactions throughout the campus, the videos have been reposted with the student’s voices.
At this time, the actors are declining to comment.