Already this fall at least three student newspapers (The Cavalier Daily, The Recorder and now the Rocky Mountain Collegian) are under heavy fire for their cartoon and editorial content. Certainly, everyone that is exposed to one of these publications is welcome to disagree with the student journalists and to express that disagreement to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, critics of these student papers have not stopped there and are putting heavy pressure on anyone they can find to see cartoonists and editorial board members of these papers fired.
The most recent case comes out of Colorado State
University. After the much-publicized tasering of a
student in Florida,
the Rocky Mountain Collegian published an editorial that read:
“Headline:
TASER THIS. Body: FUCK BUSH.”
Within hours, the paper and school were inundated with angry
comments and pressure to fire the Editor in Chief. The pressure has gotten high enough that both
the Editor
in Chief and the University
President have issued statements explaining their actions and plans.
Unfortunately, the President’s statement seems to indicate
that there will be an attempt to sanction or remove members of the editorial
board. Make no mistake, just as refusing
to print the paper would be an infringement on the students free speech, so too
would sanctioning the students for that speech after the fact.