Bearing in mind that this is second-hand knowledge, I'm rather irritated and want to get this out there:
As some of you may or may not know, a group of students came together at the end of last semester with the idea or running an independent campus publication at LeTourneau University. The idea was to run it better than the Yellow Jacket had been run and to make a paper that the students would want to read and would be proud of.
Plans were in place to run the first edition of the paper this Friday, and people were excited. Then President Austin found out. Without going into a whole lot of details that I'm shaky on, he called up the prospective editor of the independent paper this afternoon and told him not to publish. He furthered that if the paper was published, the staff would be expelled and the paper would be sued by the school. There was no tone of compromise, no inquiry as to the purpose of an independent paper... merely the promise and threat of a scorched-earth campaign directed at the staff of such a paper in the event of noncompliance.
Right now, I'm kind of numb. I was really looking forward to this, as a chance to do some journalism outside of the constraints of the Yellow Jacket and to get pay to do fun work. I had even gotten so far as to thinking out some fun articles I wanted to write about LeTourneau and just what a good time we could have with an unfettered paper and with a real budget that the editorial staff had secured through advertising. Talk about your let-downs...
All I want to know is how someone can do something like that to a group of his own students and claim to be a man of God and to be leading a campus in the direction that God wants us to go.
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at January 11, 2005 11:48 PM | TrackBackCynic, I know even less of the details than you. But, don't you think it is possible that being the president of an institution entails accountability to many different groups of people, and he is therefore not free to do or allow everything that comes along the pike?
It's HARD to be in charge of people.
Besides, one Berkeley in this country is probably enough :-)
I don't think his actions prevent him from being a man of God. Don't get me started, ok?
(p.s. can we still come to the wedding?)
Posted by: Ma Hoyt at January 12, 2005 10:41 AMMa, I really don't think that it's a matter of allowing or not allowing anything that comes down the pike. The issue is that Dr. Austin has placed himself in a position of refusing to allow students to both exercise their First Amendment rights and at the same time remain enrolled LeTourneau... not to mention my questioning of his methods of trying to intimidate students into compliance rather than meeting with them and trying to reason with them. While I will allow that it is difficult to lead people, I really can't say that such a difficulty can excuse such abusive behavior.
I guess I just have a really hard time reconciling such behavior with his repeated claims to be the "father figure" on campus... in a spiritual, academic and administrative sense. If he wants to claim such titles, then I am going to claim the mantle of an "exasperated child."
All of that aside, disagreement with me will never get you in serious trouble... I might not like it, but I'll deal with it. Many thanks for chiming in.
P.S. If LU comes anywhere near Berkeley, I don't think it will be in my lifetime.
Posted by: Vengeful Cynic at January 12, 2005 03:27 PMPersonally, I met this revelation with mere disappointment, as opposed to shock or such. It is unfortunate that such an idea was shot down before the first issue was even published (which likely would have proved what sort of paper it would be), Bud Austin shot down the idea as harshly as possible WITHOUT DISCUSSION OR NEGOTIATION WITH THE STUDENTS. Besides, an independent newspaper does not a Berkeley make. Trust me on that one, I'm from Southern California.
Posted by: Gillis at January 12, 2005 03:49 PMI'm not surprised actually that the University did this. I'm deeply disappointed in the University I intend to graduate from someday, but that's about it.
I wrote more about this on my own blog in case you might be interested.
After reading your post, I came to the conclusion that you made a serious mistake. You talked about the paper! I know that you probably don't want to be subversive but in attending such a small campus, you need to be careful.
Dr. Austin did what he thought he had to do. Nevertheless, I think you should proceed with your plans. Form a tight group, don't tell anybody what your doing, and use pen names. LeTourneau is too small of a place to get on anyone's bad side, especially Dr. Austins. Just remember, "ingenuity sets us apart."
~Ransom
P.S. If all else fails, talk with Dr. Olson. She seems to have a sort of distain for the Yellow Jacket.
hey, if youre 'friend' is still serious about this paper you should talk them into have outsiders publish it and somehow let it wind up around school. unfortunately he may not want to actually be the editor bc now austin knows who he is... still, just a thought.
Posted by: Harmony at January 14, 2005 03:14 AMThere are alternatives to this... I have a few thoughts. One is that it be published and distributed at a location off campus where students often go...
I can't say that I'm surprised, but this development this early in the semester... things may happen.
Posted by: Rho at January 14, 2005 03:48 AMIt pretty much boils down to this: we really wanted to do this thing above-board and in a professionally journalistic manner. Unfortunately, it appears that this isn't the way to get things done at LU, so I guess I'm going to kind of turn this into a warning to future generations of LU-ers of what not to do. I really think that for the Independent to go underground at this stage would be both foolish and contrary to the paradigm under which it was founded... so I seriously doubt it will take that route. Thanks for the ideas, though.
Posted by: Vengeful Cynic at January 14, 2005 09:12 AMCynic, I appreciate your desire to keep the publication entirely above board and open. The effort that was made while I was at LeTourneau was laughed out in large part because it was completely anonymous (it also had low production values). An independant publication with high production values could be a very good thing, and it is saddening to hear that such an effort was crushed.
I would be interested in additional information regarding the incident. While this does not seem entirely out of character for Dr. Austin, I would be interested to hear how he justified the decision. Is there any additional information available that I could read about? If not, perhaps I could get information by contacting some of the people with first hand knowledge.
Posted by: Ken Amelio at January 14, 2005 01:31 PMFor some reason on the LeTourneau campus, the LeTourneau administration tends to be villianified (?) from time to time. Chalk it up to LeTourneau being a small campus. Misconceptions, rumors, and all out lies spread very quickly. I have had a problem with this, ever since I arrived last year. For I do not see how people can act in such an "evil" manner. How can school officials have such a vendetta against some students? If this was true, do you not think that the student body would have united by now and called for this type of stuff to end? I received this in my e-mail this morning. Chew on it.
Subject: Rumors
I’m sending out a note to my student leaders about rumors that have surfaced about an underground newspaper and Dr. Austin’s thoughts about it. The rumor was that Dr. Austin met with the leadership of this paper and told them that there would be legal action taken to prevent its publication and that the students involved would be dismissed if they distributed it on campus. We just wanted to make sure you knew those rumors were completely false. The newspaper group has not met with the President or any Vice President at any time, and there’s no truth to the rumors of any action or consequences.
We wanted to make sure you were aware so as things spread (which they did pretty rapidly in the past few days), you were able to speak truth to the situation.
Thanks,
Corey
COREY ROSS
Resident Director and Director of Student Activities