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College tries to halt distribution of student newspaper because one headline ‘may be upsetting’

The student newspaper at Monroe Community College in upstate New York was set to run a story about health and safety hazards at its sister campus last week.

Then an administration official stepped in and tried to delay distribution of the print edition. The rationale given? The headline on the story “may be upsetting to some.”

The Democrat & Chronicle reports that the executive dean of the sister campus, Joel Frater, was bothered by the story headline “MCC’s Bastard Campus?” He emailed students and colleagues to offer his administration’s help to anyone who has “concerns about the newspaper’s coverage of the issue.”

The story was about renovations to the Sibley Building, the temporary space for the Damon City campus in Rochester, until it moves to a new complex of buildings next fall:

The article cites a memo from the MCC Faculty Association about health and safety conditions at DCC and provides additional information about the problems related to this renovation. …

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“Our headline was in response to how DCC students from past years and the current year feel they have been treated. They feel like second-class citizens,” said [Editor in Chief Becki] Walters.

Walters called the dean of student services at Damon City, Ann Topping, who allegedly told her they planned to delay distribution for a day so Frater could “issue a statement then about the new edition.”

Members of the Damon City student government were tipped off about the plan to delay distribution, however, and they rushed to the Brighton campus – where the Monroe Doctrine is based – to grab stacks of papers to bring back to their campus.

They were already distributing when Walters was arguing with Topping about the planned delay, and Topping gave them her own quarantined stacks to distribute after she saw they beat her to the punch.

A spokesperson for the college said the delay was intended to help student leaders “be prepared to respond” to the story, but that Executive Dean Frater’s “action was not appropriate.”

Walters accused the administration of “limiting the right of a free press” by trying to delay circulation so it could distribute its own statement.

Read the Democrat & Chronicle story and the Monroe Doctrine article.

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