David McSwane will always be known for his "Fuck Bush" editorial. The world will always pay more attention to his one stupid decision that it will all the productive contributions he made to his student newspaper. This makes no sense to me, and though one incident should not define the legacy of former Hustler editor Jarred Amato, the same fate may await him.

Most readers will only see the worst in Amato, but others have recognized him for the good. He was named the best sports reporter in the South last weekend at the Southeast Journalism Conference, for example, and the same group gave him a second place award in the College Journalist of the Year competition.

Amato was a creative genius at his best, though many might not remember he reformed the sports section as a sophomore and expanded it to three days a week. He brought fresh new coverage to the section and found feature stories that would interest the entire student body - from Vandy Fanatics to casual fans. At his worst, however, he allowed the desire to engineer a good story to override his knowledge of journalistic ethics.

No one will tell you what he did was right. It was unethical and frankly, stupid, but it was not his fault alone. It was not representative of his career in student media, it was not representative of his potential as a journalist, and it was not representative of the quality of his character.

Despite all of this, Amato has been treated as a case study, not as an individual but as editor No. 100-and-whatever. The Vanderbilt Student Communications Board sanitized the situation and tried to ignore any good Amato had done and any good his talents could have done in the future.

Though this board might sound like stuffy professors, students actually make up a majority of the group.

Amato violated journalistic ethics in an act that should be taken seriously. But the board opted to take only this first breach into consideration, though it should have considered the impact their decision would have on his career and the short-term success of the paper.

In doing so, they have dealt a blow to his journalistic career before it has even begun. You would think students would be able to place themselves in his shoes. You would think students would understand that mistakes made as a 20-year-old should not determine professional futures.

But it would seem the student members of the board lost sight of this in their egotistical, power-hungry desire to take the moral high ground and hand down the maximum punishment possible.

The board took too narrow a focus on this situation and did not consider the full impact of their decision on Amato and the rest of the Hustler staff.

The Hustler staff spends a lot of time together in a windowless basement office; we spend more time together than we do with our roommates. Amato has had a far-reaching impact on the paper and on those who work for it. The student body should realize the termination of his career in student media does not determine his legacy - the supportive words on these pages do.