University authorities in Colorado are to decide the fate of a student editor who published a huge “Fuck Bush” headline. David McSwane (20) is facing the sack over an incident that has grown from a campus row into a national debate about free speech.
The board of student communications will decide at the hearing whether he violated the paper’s ethics code that states that “profane and vulgar words are not acceptable for opinion writing”.
In the wake of the row, many advertisers have cancelled tens of thousands of dollars worth of adverts in the Rocky Mountain Collegian, which has been going since 1891 and which pays for itself. There have also been complaints from students, including a petition from the college Republicans calling for McSwane to resign.
Sympathisers, in emails to the university and at campus meetings, have expressed support on the basis that the constitution’s first amendment protects freedom of expression. Others have called for leniency, saying the headline was part of the naivety that can happen in student journalism.
The headline, published on September 21, was connected with an incident three days earlier at the University of Florida where a student, Andrew Meyer, refused to give up the microphone when seeking to question Senator John Kerry, the former presidential candidate. Police used a Taser on Meyer.
Reflecting a wave of public feeling that the police had overreacted, McSwane published an article under the headline “Taser this … Fuck Bush”, even though the president had no involvement in the incident. At an initial hearing last week, McSwane refused to apologise, saying the aim was to provoke a debate about freedom of speech on campuses. “We did not do this setting out to make headlines. These past couple days have been hell for all of us. Our intention was to get college students, thinking about issues that affect them,” he said.
The university’s president, Larry Penley, said: “While student journalists enjoy the privileges and protections of the first amendment, they must also accept responsibility for the choices they make. Members of a university community ought to be expected to communicate civilly and rationally and to make thoughtful arguments in support of even unpopular viewpoints.”
The university is prohibited from censoring the content of student media publications. But the board of student communications hires and can remove editors. — Â