University of Virginia Library

Totalitarian Collegiate Press (?)

— Ed.

For a really dismal view of life
in these United States, turn to the
collegiate press.

Old Grads will find no
who-has-pinned-whom gossip
columns, no space wasted on the
shenanigans of fraternities. All is
now politics and ideology.

The collegiate press, which
seems to have been taken over by
the radical left is in the forefront
of the battle against fascistic
repression which it sees everywhere
it looks. While predictably, this has
inspired crack-downs by those arch
repressors, college administrations.

In a story syndicated to college
papers around the country, the
College Press Service reports that
25 "overt acts of censorship"
against student papers and the
shutdowns of two campus radio
stations have occurred since the start
of the current school year.

Administrative actions include
the firing of editors, evictions and
lockouts from officers, freezing of
funds, suppression of copy and
outright prohibition to publish.

For example, the papers at two
black schools, Dillard University
and Norfolk State, were shutdown
this semester, the former when the
editor refused to submit copy to a
faculty adviser for prepublication
O.K.

At Niagara University, a
Catholic institution, the "Index"
was threatened with shutdown for
running an ad for abortion referral
and a "Wanted for Genocide"
poster of President Nixon.

An abortion ad brought a
lockout at the "Concordian" of
Concordia College in Minnesota.

The managing editor of the
"Arrow" at the University of
Southern California was fired when
she refused to change an editorial
objected to by the paper's adviser.

Last year the 'Diamondback' at
the University of Maryland was
censored when it attempted to run
a photo of a burning American flag
and this year became a center of
controversy again when the editors
announced a pornography-writing
contest.

The number of these incidents,
says CPS, "does not take into
account the 'subtle' forms of
intimidation or actual copy
blackout which do not get
reported." Forty per cent of
student editors responding to a
questionnaire from CPS stated they
had experienced some form of
censorship or harassment.

"And one thing seems pretty
sure," concludes the story, —"it's
going to get worse."

That things are going to be
worse is, of course, a basic tenet of
the revolutionary faith. It would be
useless to try to tell college editors
that they are enjoying freedoms
their predecessors never even
conceived of.

It would be useless to point out
that there is a world of difference
between censorship by a
government official and censorship
by the owners or sponsors of a
particular publication. Every
publisher of every newspaper in the
country exercises "censorship" over
his editors.

It would be useless to try to
explain that those who pay taxes or
contribute funds to support a
school have a right to object when
what they consider good taste or
morality is violated — with their
money.

With all their excesses, the new
breed of student editors has
brought fresh life and validity to
the formerly innocuous collegiate
press. But too many of them are
totalitarians at heart.

What they mean by freedom of
the press is freedom for them to
print what they think should be
printed. They don't necessarily
believe in freedom of the press for
anybody else.