Administrators at Virginia Tech have threatened to cut funding to the Collegiate Times, the university’ s student-run newspaper, because they did not appreciate the anonymous comments on the paper’s Web site.
Administrators said that the anonymous comments were racist, discriminatory and, in general, offensive.
Despite how awful administrators thought these comments were, they couldn’t cut the paper’s funding solely on this issue.
After a letter was sent out by administrators on Feb. 8, Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, the organization that oversees the newspaper, said that anonymous speech was an important part of free speech and democracies, stating that the university should respect the First Amendment and not violate the newspaper’s constitutional rights. In its letter, EMCVT claimed the newspaper’s content was the reason the university wanted to cut funding.
A week after the administrators’ letter was sent out saying funding would be cut, a university spokesman consulted with Virginia Tech’s chief legal counsel, who made it clear that the cutbacks requested by the Commission on Student Affairs were not permissible under the law. It was a victory for the Collegiate Times and college newspapers around the country.
Student Publications at UH was the subject of a Feb. 12 Student Fee Advisory Committee meeting, where recommendations for funding were made. Before the meeting, some student members of the committee made derogatory comments about the Daily Cougar. It was in bad taste and unprofessional of these students to comment on the newspaper’s content before a meeting where they would discuss the amount of next year’s funding for Student Publications.
During the meeting, Dean of Students and SFAC committee member William Munson asked the committee not to base their decision on the Daily Cougar’s content, which is the right and professional thing to do.
Let this be a message to all universities. Administrators can’t decide a newspaper’s funding based on whether they like the content of it or not. It is unconstitutional.
