This weekend, the Saint Louis University board of directors voted to support the university administration in its determination to revoke the charter guaranteeing the independence of the eighty-six-year-old University News, the university’s student newspaper. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the board’s vote also established a ten-day period during which student leaders have the opportunity to “express their concerns.”

Students have every right to be concerned, since they will lose the ability to choose their editor and since control of the publication will be placed with the SLU office of student development, an office that has a frankly public-relations mission. Kent Porterfield, who heads that office, has said that the administration only wishes to improve the quality of the paper, but the intent seems clearly to muzzle the student publication, which in the past has been sharply critical of high-handed administration actions. Observers are saying that the board intends the administration to go back and negotiate with the students. How likely the administration is to negotiate in good faith is anybody’s guess, but this is the second time the administration has sought to silence the University News.

This story has generated a good deal of support for the student journalists. In an editorial last week the Post Dispatch wrote that “the administration’s claim that the proposed changes will not affect editorial integrity rings hollow”; and the Saint Louis Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists went on record asking the SLU board to reject the administration proposal, saying:

The St. Louis Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is troubled by reports concerning the University News, the student newspaper at Saint Louis University. The chapter believes a proposed change to the newspaper’s charter will stifle the publication’s editorial independence and freedom of expression on campus. . . .

A student newspaper is not an instrument that belongs solely to the university. The newspaper is a public forum where students can freely express themselves and exchange ideas about their community and the world. It should reflect the academic and intellectual freedom found in an internationally renowned institution of higher education.

Rather than trampling on students’ First Amendment rights, the St. Louis Chapter invites the university to adopt the SPJ’s Campus Media Statement, which states that campus publications “are designated public forums and free from censorship and advance approval of content.”

How likely it is that Saint Louis University’s present administration will constitute the University News a public forum free from censorship may be gleaned from a few facts. Here is part of University News editor Diana Benanti’s description of the students’ meeting with university provost, Joseph Weixlmann, in which the university’s intentions were announced.

Today, April 30, the Editorial Board of the University News and the current and newly-elected presidents of the Student Government Association met with the Vice President of Student Development Kent Porterfield and Provost Joe Weixlmann. (Dr. Avis Meyer, the “unofficial adviser” of the U.News and my attorney Tim E. Hogan were asked to leave before the meeting began, or Weixlmann refused to conduct the meeting. They waited outside).

And here’s an account of the meeting itself, from the May 4 issue of the News;

. . . On Monday, April 30, the editorial board of The University News met with Provost Joe Weixlmann, Ph.D., and Vice President for Student Development Kent Porterfield, Ed.D. After their adviser emeritus was persuaded to leave the room, students were informed that administrators planned to ask the Board of Trustees to revoke the organization’s charter at the Board’s meeting this weekend. Students were then told that they had two options: as individuals, they could attempt to start a completely independent, off-campus newspaper, without financial assistance and distribution rights, to be determined later. Or, they could join a new, university-sponsored newspaper, accepting a charter written by administrators, which was absolutely devoid of the editorial board’s input. Weixlmann and Porterfield made it clear that, though student input would be considered, no conceptual changes would be made to the administration’s new draft of the charter.

Benanti filed suit against the university when tuition remission she was promised as editor was revoked this past year. Why Weixlmann refused to conduct the meeting with the student’s advocates present, common sense can judge. Weixlmann has also dropped a couple of hints about financial improprieties at the University News, but the paper has been subjected to two recent unanounced audits (for what purpose one can only speculate), and no financial improprieties have been found.

Common sense can also judge what is behind the reorganization of the University News if one remembers the fairly long list of administrative decisions about which the paper has complained over the past few years. Mention of many of these may be found in the Post Dispatch editorial and on the current University News op/ed page. According to the Post Dispatch,

Over the years, the award-winning newspaper occasionally has clashed with Rev. Biondi, criticizing decisions to sell the university’s hospital, raise parking fees and graduation fees and dismiss popular teachers. One recent scathing editorial, reviewing a number of administrative decisions made without substantive student participation, wrote that “SLU resembles an authoritarian regime.”

University president, Lawrence Biondi, the authority in authoritarian, has said regarding the University News that it is “very important” that he help the paper “once again become a student newspaper that offers a respected, responsible voice.” This is the same Lawrence Biondi whom the University News exposed as a plagiarist in 2005 and who has recently fired basketball coach Brad Soderberg. About the firing, one local sportswriter declared, “Multiple sources told me [athletic director Cheryl] Levick had assured the parents of potential recruits that Soderberg’s job was safe — and now SLU’s word is dirt.”

The destruction of the University News shames Saint Louis University similarly–and it shames the Society of Jesus. One may hope that Diana Benanti is right that there is a 50/50 chance that the university will negotiate in good faith with the students. Perhaps one may hope as well that the Jesuits, who have often spoken truth to power, might find the will to remedy this wrong.