Monday, The Lantern ran a political cartoon depicting a parody of a conversation between University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr and Brutus Buckeye where coach Carr said his career is shot and Brutus asked if he was at the Omega Psi Phi fraternity party.

Late Saturday a shooting incident occurred outside of an Omega Psi Psi event in which someone was injured.

The event – which was reported in The Lantern – is still under investigation. Political cartoons aren’t meant to offend, and we sincerely apologize to anyone who thought the cartoon was in poor taste.

Political cartoons are meant to be thought-provoking and offer social commentary. It is an outlet for the artist to blend the news with their artistic ability and express their views, no matter how critical they might be, and the reader’s reaction might not always be the one we intended to get.

Some people thought the cartoon emphasized the stereotypes placed upon African American Fraternities and Sororities and the events they host, which is understandable but might be too quick a judgment. This is not the intention behind the cartoon. It was drawn just as the news was released, and making a correlation between race and the cartoon is not fair. We can say the timing might not have been right and we will say race played absolutely no part in the drawing of the cartoon.

It should be noted that the decision to run the cartoon was not in malice toward a particular organization, and we hope our readers understand that.