Editors of the student newspaper at Cedarville University, a Baptist institution in Ohio, opted to suspend publication of the semester’s final issue on Thursday to protest tightening censorship by the administration.
“Because of the increasing amount of pressure to print only specific things, the editors decided not to print a last issue,” said Rebecca High, a graduating senior and editor of the newspaper’s Viewpoints section.
Concern from university trustees over liberal articles had prompted campus officials to begin previewing the biweekly newspaper, Cedars, in January. Administrators required students to submit all content to the university’s public-relations office for approval before publication.
Oversight of the paper, which is financed by the university, intensified throughout the semester, students said.
Cedarville is no stranger to disputes involving its conservative, religious mission. Controversy flared there last year over the terminations, in 2007, of two tenured professors in a biblical-studies department deeply divided over theological questions. The American Association of University Professors criticized Cedarville for threatening academic freedom, and a student’s secret recordings suggested that top officials had timed the firings to avoid affecting the university’s accreditation.
Cedars attracted attention last fall after the Viewpoints section ran columns disapproving of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, arguing that “there was nothing wrong with homosexuality,” and suggesting that “abortion wasn’t a black and white issue,” said a writer for the newspaper who preferred to remain anonymous. The newspaper has no archive online.
Other students on the Cedars staff acknowledged the paper’s liberal reputation but defended its role as a forum for discussion at Cedarville. “It’s a liberal-arts school, not a Bible college,” said Ms. High. “We pride ourselves on critical thinking.”
A disclaimer appeared after each “Point/Counterpoint” feature: “Comments and opinions expressed in the Viewpoints section do not necessarily represent the views of Cedars or Cedarville University.”
A counterpoint on vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin proved particularly touchy. Trustees complained about that and other articles at a meeting in January, students said, and the university then appointed a reader, an officer in the public-relations office who previewed all editorial content for Cedars.
‘The University’s View’
Scott D. Calhoun worried about that. “I had very conflicted feelings,” said Mr. Calhoun, an associate professor of English and a longtime faculty adviser to the paper. “It was an understandable request but fundamentally at odds with the enterprise of scholastic journalism.”
John W. Davis, the university’s director of public relations, defended the policy, saying its purpose was “to help the students get the university’s perspective … to give advice to students and say, ‘Here are some issues that might be cause for concern among your readers.’”
As a result of discussions with the reader, students changed some articles and spiked others, he said.
“They were probably discouraged, but encouraged, too,” Mr. Davis said. “We were encouraging them to think through their stories.”
He declined to comment on the content of the articles the university cut or the specific reasons for doing so.
According to Mr. Calhoun, top administrators wanted the student newspaper’s opinions to align with the university’s—a departure from previous grumbling. “Historically,” he said, “it’s just been, ‘I didn’t like that.’ Only recently has it been couched in terms of, ‘The university’s view wasn’t presented.’”
From the newspaper’s most recent issue, an April Fool’s edition, the public-relations office pulled satires of Cedarville’s mandatory Bible minor and debate over biblical certainty, said Ms. High, the Viewpoints editor. Students were unhappy but tolerated the decisions, she said: “There’s not a whole lot you can do when you’re not an independent newspaper.”
The university strengthened its authority. Amid mounting controversy over a column the paper had published in late March, in which a female student called an all-male “modesty panel” on the campus “a group of men [who] feel that they have the righteous authority to tell a group of women how to dress,” top officials worried that the existing review policy was too lenient.
They appealed to Mr. Calhoun to ensure that the semester’s final issue of Cedars had no controversial content. “The request to produce a paper that wasn’t a distraction to the trustees really wasn’t something in good conscience I wanted to be a part of,” he said. He resigned as adviser.
A Letter in Lieu of an Issue
The students then decided not to publish their last issue. “It had just gone too far,” said Joshua Saunders, a graduating senior and managing editor of the newspaper. Instead of the usual 16 pages, the students printed a letter to the campus.
Mr. Saunders declined to send the letter to The Chronicle, saying the message was for Cedarville and not intended to attract outside attention. “We’d be considered just stirring up trouble for no good reason,” he said.
Excerpts of the statement, however, were published online on Thursday by the magazine Christianity Today.
“Review by the public-relations department undermines our ability to think critically and engage culture,” the magazine quotes the letter as saying. “We grieve the loss of free expression and healthy discourse once found in your newspaper, traits that ought to characterize all vibrant institutions of higher learning.”
Carl A. Ruby, Cedarville’s vice president for student life, responded to the letter in an e-mail message to the campus, Christianity Today reported. “Finding the right balance of freedom of expression is difficult, especially in the context of a community of believers who voluntarily give up some of our freedoms for the sake of our shared mission,” he said. “This has been a difficult arrangement, both for the students and for our staff in public relations, and we recognize that it probably isn’t the most ideal approach to editorial oversight for the future.”
Cedarville plans to move the student newspaper into its communications-arts department in the fall, Mr. Davis said.
This week’s decision not to publish, students said, was designed to help future writers.
“We’d like to see them take the student newspaper and make it as good as it can be,” Mr. Saunders said. “The way that it’s set up right now definitely hinders that.”
