“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.”

-George Bernard Shaw

“Our liberty depends on freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”
-Walter Cronkite

On Wednesday, at a convocation honoring the four professors who have received tenure this year, Provost Dan Hornbach spoke eloquently about the importance of tenure for the preservation of academic freedom. Tenure ensures that professors can introduce new and controversial ideas into their classrooms without fear of repercussions. Without the freedom to try new things, Hornbach accurately stated, we could make little progress in the academy. The American Association of University Professors’ statement on tenure states, “Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.”

Press freedom, like academic freedom, is essential in a democracy. In fact, one wonders why journalists are not given lifetime appointments just like university professors (at least, one wonders that if one is currently looking for a job). Media is the only means by which the governed can hold the government (or the administration) accountable. It is essential, therefore, that journalists are able to report without fear of repercussions.

College newspapers are inherently vulnerable to censorship. They are often dependent on outside funding. They are often the only available source of news about the college. Many college administrations have no qualms with instituting various levels of “oversight” over their student-run newspapers.

Luckily, the Macalester administration does not try to censor The Mac Weekly. But we are still vulnerable. The situation last week illustrates this. After working on the paper for 24 hours straight, we received a letter from Professor Terry Boychuk’s lawyer. The letter expressed concern that we would violate confidentiality and/or print something libelous, and requested that we therefore not print it. The lawyer said that he would make the same request of the administration. We interpreted the letter as a threat to sue, and we believe it was meant to be such a threat.

We had no choice but to pull the paper altogether. The Mac Weekly is the product of about 150 hours of volunteer work every week, and it has come out every week in recent history. We did not take this decision lightly. We do not have the resources to fight a legal battle, even though we were confident that we did nothing wrong. After staying up all night, we could not have altered the article or replaced it. And we did not want to alter an article just because we were threatened with a frivolous lawsuit. We also hope that we made a statement about the importance of The Mac Weekly to the Macalester community.

The Mac Weekly has been extremely careful in its coverage of this controversy. We have made decisions based on journalistic ethics, community responsibility and personal morals. We know that this has been a controversial and emotional issue since the first article about Terry Boychuk appeared. We hope, however, that the faculty and the administration will learn the appropriate lessons from this whole affair, and not focus their emotions on the Weekly. The idea that we should be under administration “oversight” is absurd. The idea that we should remove all articles about Terry Boychuk from the Web site now that he has been “exonerated” is absurd. Once someone is found “not guilty,” do we try to erase all memory of the event?

Thomas Jefferson once said that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. We have included a lot of quotes in this editorial, because this has all been said before. But it constantly needs to be repeated: a student-run, un-censored newspaper is essential to preserve the free exchange of ideas on this campus. Press freedom is as important as academic freedom. Freedom of the press is democracy.