Four score . and five years ago, this newspaper was brought forth by our fore-editors, a publication of the students, by the students and for the students. And thus, this administration’s latest salvo against this student publication, in the form of tampering with advising and tuition remission, merits a measured response.
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Ben Franklin said that the first duty of citizens is to question authority, and that duty has been, and remains, one of our proud objectives. However, one of the problems this paper has encountered in pinning this objective down, particularly since the current president moved into his snazzy digs in DuBourg Hall, has been the unanticipated and, in our minds, often blow-a-gasket reactions to virtually any criticism – regardless of how well-deserved or well-supported such criticism might seem to a disinterested reader. (Imagine the Tasmanian Devil fulminating over Johnny Apple.)
The walls of our newspaper office are festooned with plaques attesting to our success; our alumni populate prestige jobs and boardrooms, editing and writing vigorously, across the planet, daily. (From the Wall Street Journal, to McGraw-Hill, in Spain; from Ohio State University to Boeing; from Monsanto to Anheuser-Busch, to the Post-Dispatch and newspapers in Green Bay, Wisc., Quincy, Ill., Madison, Wisc., Chicago, Philadelphia, and teachers, lawyers, graduate students, advertising and PR pros, musicians, and on and on, ad infinitum-they are an accomplished bunch, and that’s only a handful of our editors in chief.)
They, and we, have survived several outbursts from the powers that be during our extended tenure on this campus. For example: In the ’98-’99 school year, this paper’s staff was threatened with expulsion from Busch Student Center, seizure of its equipment, loss of the editor’s tuition remission and the dismissal of its longtime adviser.
This venture into folly was launched without any discussion or complaints about coverage or consulting the staff; the administration maintained that its actions were allowed by the paper’s constitution – which was true, since they had hastily rewritten that document- without consulting the staff. And the ne’er-do-wells who were eventually cited as the sources of the “errors” were, of course, graduated and gone. But some high muckety-muck apparently decided that someone had to pay, so a gaggle of innocent students had to defend themselves and the scuttling of this paper, which they did, with the aid of sleeping bags on the office floor, loyal alumni and astute local media. (Shades of the ’60s, upside down.)
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And now, here we go again.
The administration has decided to meddle with and redistribute the tuition remission funding, including the Student Government Association’s and The University News’ … both of which have been in place since Fr. Reinert generously initiated them in the early ’70s.
Now, we fully understand that other student organizations might want to tap into the University’s largess and secure some form of tuition relief for their leaders. We applaud that inclination and encourage them to ferret it out. (We recently endorsed giving all student leaders some sort of tuition remission, since it’s not real money, anyway … just largely administrative paper shuffling.)
But – does anyone think that this scheme, a simultaneous threat to the two student organizations that actually wield some clout on campus, just magically popped out of the imposing towers of 22 N. Grand Blvd.?
The leaders of both of these enduring organizations now face unanticipated, hobbling debt. Can this be a coincidence? After all, intimidating the occasional dean, vice president or provost with dire consequence$ is one thing. But students, and that includes us, pay the bills here. (One solution does pop into the mind: the student activity fee, for which 7,000 students have paid $10 each, for two years, for a yearbook that no longer exists. How about putting that $140,000 puppy to work for these deserving students?)
In addition, DuBourg Hall has seen fit to tack on some extra “help” for this paper, by appointing still another adviser, canceling the current adviser’s modest stipend ($1,500, paid by the staff) and appointing a new advisory board. We do not even quarrel with the possibility that good results might come from such a board, but it would be nice to have been consulted. It is our school and our paper, after all.
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Thomas Jefferson wrote that a paper’s primary responsibility is to check on government. And that has been, and remains, our weekly benchmark and raison d’etre. And hereabouts, the government is the SGA and DuBourg Hall. But one of the basic rationales that the administration mentions when it decides to justify bullying its students for “checking” on government is that the university is the publisher of the paper and is, thus, responsible for the paper’s content and has the right to make changes.
But this newspaper’s ownership is not as black and white as DuBourg Hall would have us believe. The standard definition of a publisher, whether one consults a dictionary or practical experience, is a person or firm whose business is publishing and who owns the paper’s production equipment and facilities.
Since the late ’80s, and the dawn of computers, The University News has owned its equipment-computers, printers, furniture, etc.; and the paper pays its own bills, and a few modest staff salaries, from advertising revenue. Our business is publishing (keeping Samuel Clemens’ counsel – to report the news and raise a little hell – in mind); and we are virtually the only student-run organization on campus that receives no financial aid, none.
But .we also benefit from a room, security and utilities supplied by the university, as does every other organization of any size, so we are not exactly independent – and the University is not exactly the publisher. It’s a give-and-take, gray world out there, and we understand that; would that the administration understood such nuances.
All of this makes a delicate balance necessary, and mutual respect can provide both balm and calm. But that doesn’t seem to occur to most members of this administration, whose motto seems to be: Building is a noun, constructing with bricks and mortar; not a verb, for constructing good relationships with students and their organizations.
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Four score and five years ago, this newspaper came forth. Phalanxes of students have persevered, learned and succeeded in its challenging trenches, joining the ranks of the ever-expanding SLU and University News alumni. We remain and are proud to be the primary student voice and the campus’ forum for John Milton’s enduring ideal-an open marketplace of ideas and opinions.
We are here. We have been here for some 2,550 editions. And we will be here long after the current administration has shuffled off this mortal coil, cudgels in hand, no doubt kvetching and grousing to the end. Tasmanian Devil notwithstanding.