The College Fix

An attempt to kill a student’s article about a former professor at a Christian college facing child molestation charges instead prompts a nationwide news story and a quasi-mea culpa from school’s president, WORLD on Campus reports.

When Alex Green, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at a small Christian college in Tennessee, sought to publish an article about a former teacher facing aggravated child molestation and child sexual exploitation charges, the school’s president axed that plan, the article states.

Green wanted people on campus to know about (Dr. David) Morgan so that the incident’s sordid details would not come back to haunt the school, as Sandusky’s misdeeds tarnished Penn State.

But Dr. Stephen Livesay, president of the 800-student (Bryan College) in Dayton, Tenn., didn’t share Green’s belief that dragging Morgan’s story into the open would help the school.

After Green copied the article and posted it around school, it brought a phalanx of mainstream news reporters to the campus and created a firestorm of controversy, the article says. Apparently Livesay has seen the error of his ways, and the incident taught Green that for every action there’s a reaction:

Although Green, a senior, told (media blogger Jim) Romenesko he knew he risked expulsion for printing the story, Livesay said he would not face any further punishment. The experience has taught Green that actions sometimes have unintended consequences, Livesay said. But his heart was in the right place, and both Green and administrators have learned “many good things” from the experience, Livesay said.

In hindsight, killing the story might have been a mistake, Livesay admitted. Administrators believed they were doing the right thing in protecting Morgan’s privacy. They had no reports he had behaved inappropriately during his two years at Bryan. The background check done before the school hired him came back clean.

‘Our intent was to look at the situation as Christians and do what was right,’ Livesay said. ‘As humans, we are fallible. What we can do is learn from our mistakes.’

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