Conservative Paper at OSU Censored by Administration
Our friends at The Liberty, the conservative student publication at Oregon State, are currently in a kerfuffle with the administration over their right to distribute issues. The OSU administration told The Liberty that, since it’s not an officially recognized OSU publication (whatever that means), it can’t have distribution boxes around campus. The Liberty says this is little more than de facto censorship. From a guest opinion in the Daily Barometer:
To censor, as a transitive verb, means “to keep from being published or transmitted: ban, black out, hush (up), stifle, [or] suppress.” Todd Simmons, OSU’s spokesperson, said in an interview with KEZI regarding the University’s treatment of The Liberty’s distribution, “I have never seen an instance that they haven’t been readily available at multiple locations around campus. So if that qualifies as censorship, I’d have to be educated as to what the thinking is there.” If we don’t count the term (winter ’09) that OSU officials ordered the removal every single Liberty bin from the OSU campus and tossed them by a dumpster at 35th and Washington, then the multiple locations that Mr. Simmons is referring to are The Memorial Union and Snell Hall. In other words, the only locations that the university is allowing The Liberty to place its bins are in and around the buildings that are owned and run by the student body (ASOSU). By restricting our publication to a single block, if even that, of campus, OSU officials are stifling and therefore censoring The Liberty.
The OSU administration also claims the Daily Barometer’s long history and association with the university give it special rights to distribution. Sorry, but the First Amendment doesn’t work on the merit system. OSU needs to give all of its student publications equal access to campus, regardless of their history or how much the administration likes them.
