There are fewer than 10 reasons why student newspapers get stolen, according to a helpful Washington Post analysis of data from the Student Press Law Center.
The second-least common reason is “content deemed offensive to conservative sensibilities.” No surprise – the typical residential college isn’t full of Rush Limbaugh fanboys.
It’s even worse when an administration itself decides to remove the air of mystery and proactively set out in policy that it reserves the right to censor the newspaper.
Bryan College in Tennessee, a conservative evangelical school named after “free silver” advocate, presidential candidate and Scopes trial participant William Jennings Bryan, has just joined conservative critics of a free press.
According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, a change to the Faculty-Administrative Guide gives absolute power over The Triangle to the department chair:
The department chairperson “must have prior review and have the ability to direct, countermand, change the specific products during the process of publication while also, in his or her ability, seek to kindly support and encourage all parties involved,” the guideline states.
“Kindly” – well, that makes censorship of the “products” easier to swallow. The new boss would appear to be Reggie Ecarma, the subject of a softball profile in The Triangle last month.
Staffers previously submitted their articles to the faculty adviser, a position that (at many schools) is more likely to be filled by a former journalist who encourages students not to kowtow to power. They are frequent targets of administrators who are angry at the paper.
RELATED: Faculty give middle finger to newspaper board by submitting ousted adviser
Bryan has the most creative justification for censorship that I’ve ever seen:
[Vice President of Academics Kevin] Clauson said this policy was expanded and censorship of the paper heightened in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.
He said the school is not worried students will write in favor of that decision or similar decisions made by the federal government, but that the school strongly opposes gay marriage and doesn’t “want to disseminate that information widely.”
“There are certain things about those issues that we really would have a problem with if they were to make it into the newspaper, our newspaper,” Clauson said.
By “our” newspaper, Clauson sounds like he means the administration’s mouthpiece, and suggests that he just doesn’t want to hear certain subjects explored in The Triangle at all.
Just pretend like society doesn’t exist around them, so their students don’t have to think critically about the subjects that will greet them in the post-college world, whether they like it or not.
Sound like the typical university’s mile-wide harassment code or microaggressions list yet?
The paper’s editor in chief isn’t happy that the school is forcing this down her throat using the Christian jargon of “obeying and honoring authority,” a dictum that has no place in a newspaper that seeks to have any credibility with its readership.
The Times Free Press connects the policy change to Bryan’s history of controversies, which include a high-profile flareup with faculty over its sudden changed stance on human origins. That led to a vote of no confidence in President Stephen Livesay.
The school wanted to essentially erase history:
Part of the new policy stated that all of the Triangle’s archives older than six months would be “removed from hard copies or online versions of all student publication, in order to preserve the timeliness and value of the publication.”
Of all the recent policy changes, that one drew the most attention and outrage, as many faculty, students and alumni felt the school was attempting to whitewash its controversial past by deleting past articles.
That one didn’t stick, however: Following that outrage, Clauson told faculty and students he was requesting that old stories “be archived on The Triangle’s website, and still be accessible.”
With that one compromise, don’t expect another from this administration.
Way to confirm that it’s not only intolerant progressive students and administrators who try to shelter the next generation from the outside world, Bryan.
RELATED: School’s new dean told paper it couldn’t run his picture without permission
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