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January 11, 1985/The Maroon Tiger/Page 2
Collegiate Press Freedom At A Glance
Editor's Note: This week, The
Maroon Tiger wins another
award for being the Nation’s
number one collegiate press in
term of press freedom. In this
issue we will highlight some
editorial materials dealing with
the subject.
•The Michigan State U. student
government will publish its own
quarterly student newspaper
supplement covering Associated
Students and student group
news. ASMSU is hiring a
graduate student editor. The
State News advertising staff will
handle layout and production
work. ASMSU felt the student
paper could do a better job of
publishing and distributing the
supplement than it could do
alone.
•The Cornell U. student
newspaper refused to run an ad
for a book which claims the
Holocaust never happened and
has been accused of censorship
by the book's distributor, Cobra
Press. The Cornell Daily Sun
turned down the ad as a violation
of its policy against sexist and
racist advertising. The Book, The
Hoax of the Twentieth Century
was written by controversial
Northwestern U. engineering
professor Arthur Butz.
•The U. of Notre Dame student
newspaper is maintaining its
right to endorse campus can
didates despite opposition from
the student senate. Senators
threatened to fine the endorsed
candidates, but The Observer
said it would continue to make
endorsements, even if the can
didates themselves opposed
them. Editors said the paper’s
staff covers campus issues
yearround and is in a unique
position to evaluate candidates.
•Student evaluations of U. of
Texas-Austin professors will be
published in a student
newspaper supplement, giving
all students access to the infor
mation. The evaluations, which
include only those valuntarily
released by faculty members,
have been available only in
limited supply. The Students'
Association and the Senior
Cabinet are co-sponsoring the
publication, with a financial
contribution from the Texas
Student Publications Board.
•Western Kentucky U. graduate
student Sherrie Kelley probably
wasn’t the first to read of her
impending engagement.
Kelley’s boyfriend, Bart
Dahmer, decided to “do
something original’’ and
propose to Kelley in a student
newspaper ad. So there, on page
seven of the Western Herald,
next to the Godfather Pizza
promotion, was Dahmer’s
proposal.
Figuring one of her friends
might see it first and tell Kelley
about it, Dahmer raced to her
apartment the morning the
paper came out to show it to her
himself. He then presented her
with a diamond ring.
Kelley accepted the proposal,
and said she didn’t mind
Dahmer’s public forum —
although both students came in
for a lot of kidding from
classmates and even professors.
But, she told the Herald, “I
would have killed him if I’d read
it in public.”
Herald editors say it’s the
paper’s first ad proposal. But
maybe the trend will catch on. A
major battle over student press
rights is shaping up at Louisiana
State U., where the editor of the
student newspaper, the Daily
Reveille is suing the school over
an administration ban on
pregnancy-related advertising.
The LSU administration has
indicateu it may withdraw the
restrictions, pending approval by
the Board of Supervisors. Dane
Strother, editor of the Daily
Reveille says that may not end
the controversy. He plans to
push for total student control of
both editorial and advertising
content of the newspaper.
The ad restrictions, which state
that no university publications
may run pregnancy-related ads,
were imposed earlier this fall
after both pro-life and abortion
clinic ads were pulled from the
student telephone directory by
LSU administrators. In announ
cing the ban, the administration
said it wants to provide student!
with the best advice and health
care possible by encouraging
students to first consult the
Student Health Service, not an
off-campus clinic or organiza
tion, said Chancellor lames
Wharton.
But from the Reveille’s point
of view, the ban is simply a
violation of free press rights, says
Strother, who filed the suit in
federal district court with back
ing from the American Civil
Liberties Union. “I respect the
administration's point of view,
and I think they respect mine,”
he says. "I’ve done everything I
can not to make this a student-
administration war — we haven't
even written any editorials on
the subject. But I don’t think the
administration has the right to
tell us what we can and can't
print.
A central issue in the court
case is trying to decide who is
legally publisher of the Reveille.
Like the student radio station
and yearbook, it comes under a
Student Media Board. But the $2
per-student semester fee which
supports the media doesn’t
reach the Reveille’s conffers,
Strother claims. “The Reveille is
so prosperous that we not only
don’t use fee money, but we also
subsidize the radio station and
the yearbook,” he says. While
the administration states that
LSU’s Board of Supervisors serves
as publisher, Strother believes
students themselves have that
authority.
He’s gotten backing from the
national Sigma Delta Chi/Society
of Professional Journalists, and
from major newspapers
nationwide, along with the
ACLU support. Now that the
administration has backed off
the ad ban, however, Strother
hopes to avoid going to court. "I
want to be able to persuade the
Board of Supervisors that to have
a really good paper, the students
must have control," he says. “I
don’t know how far I can get with
that.”
•Two editors of the Seattle
Pacific U. student newspaper
resigned after the student
government threatened to cut
the newspaper’s funding for
allegedly slanting political
coverage.
Opinion Editor Julie Schuster
and Photography Editor Mike
Rees quit their newspaper posts
after Editor-in-Chief Jennifer
Ouelette agreed to publish an
apology for an issue of The
Falcon that ran editorials and
letters against President Reagan,
and a feature on a campus liberal
activist.
Leaders of the Associated
Students (ASSP) felt the issue
presented imbalanced coverage
and wasn't geared to the school's
conservative student body. ASSP
President Dave Mcl ntyre said the
issue violated The Falcon’s
publishingguidelineswhich deal
with such things as obscene and
blasphemous material, and
balanced coverage. McIntyre
says the ASSP Senate was par
ticularly angered by the
editorial, in which students sell
ing “Fritzbuster” T-shirts were
termed “Morons.'' The Senate
sent Ouellette a letter charging
the paper with violating its
guidelines for fair coverage and
libel. Ouellette subsequently
met with McIntyre and agreed to
print an apology, rather than
face possible funding cuts.
Schuster stepped down in
hopes her departure would end
the ASSP's displeasure with The
Falcon. But both she and
Ouelette told the U. of
Washington student newspaper
that The Falcon continues in
contant threat of losing funding,
because it isn’t always the public
relations organ the ASSP wants.
Schuster also told the
Washington Daily that she’ll
launch a new features-opinions
publication called The Alter
native as an independent source
of campus information.
•The Brown U. student
newspaper found many of the
students listed in a political ad as
Reagan-Bush backers weren’t
actually Republican voters at all.
After one of the students listed
complained she had only sought
further information about the
Reagan ticket, the Brown Daily
Herald called a random sample
of 10 students listed in thead and
found only four actually sup
ported the GOP. The student
Reagan-Bush organization
which compiled the ad took
responsibility for the error, say
ing some lists got confused.
*A Stanford U. student
editorial staff. It will cost the
independently funded paper
newspaper reporter spent a
practice session with the Car
dinal football team, probably
becoming Stanford’s first 5’3”
female player. Marilyn Wann
wrote about the experience in
her Stanford Daily column, ad
mitting she looked pretty foolish
in the gear, and spent some of
practice playing catch with the
ball boy. But when walking back
to the gym to change, Wann did
fool a few observers, who asked
if she played for the women's
football team.
•The U. of California-Berkeley
student newspaper banned
Playboy ads from its pages,
saying the magazine is sexist. The
ad ban was imposed by a 25-11
vote of the Daily Californian
about $3,500 in ads for 1984-85.
•A network of 40 college radio
stations provided up-to-the-
minute coverage of national and
regional elections, focusing on
how the November results
affected the education com
munity. The Election Night
College Network, conceived by
Mark Gronich, a State U. of New
York-Albany graduate student,
linked the college stations so
they could provide each other
with first-hand information of
Congressional and statewide
races.
•The Vale U. humor magazine,
which bills itself as the oldest
college humor publication, is
changing its formate to include
arts/entertainment writing and a
glossy magazine look. The Yale
Record took the fall 1984
semester off from publishing to
raise funds for the finalize the
changes. It’s hoped the new look
will return the Record to its past
days of prosperity and end
current financial woes.
•The U. of Oklahoma Police
Department agreed to make
more information about campus
incidents available to the student
newspaper, the Oklahoma Daily.
After meeting with newspaper
and Publications Board
representatives, the OUPD
agreed not to withhold the
names of victims and the ac
cused, except in instances whre
they are protected by state law.
The Publication Board is also
studying other requests by the
Daily staff, to determine what
information is needed from
OUPD.
•The Boston U. student
newspaper dropped a daily
comic strip and issued an
apology for its contents after the
cartoonist depicted President
Reagan being shot in the head.
The cartoonist will remain on the
staff of the independent paper,
despite efforts to fire him, and
plans to start a new comic strip.
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