Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
It’ll go down as an unbelievable coincidence that, April 25, the same day the Indiana Daily Student staged a walkout last semester, the Indiana State Police arrested 33 people in Dunn Meadow at the site of a pro-Palestinian encampment.
The walkout came about because “the severity of the threats against student media warrant(ed) immediate action.” Even without a published story, we still compiled a thread on X about the historic scene, because ultimately, the need to inform the community about this moment superseded any pious adherence to our own demonstration. The thread, which received over 200 reposts and 1,000 likes, exhibited the fact readers were turning to us for up-to-date information. Nevertheless, while we were reporting from the Meadow, we had fashioned a temporary newsroom at the Monroe County Public Library. Our usual space in Franklin Hall was empty. No cohesive story about what happened that day went up until midnight, April 26.
This unbelievable coincidence, as I called it, ended up a perfect indicator of what a world without the IDS might look like: it should go without saying that a student newspaper is uniquely well-equipped and well-suited to report, analyze, record and commentate on what’s happening to students.
The lack of any published content that day conveyed a powerful message, but, unfortunately, it seems to have gone over the Media School’s head. Or, perhaps, it was simply ignored. On Oct. 8, the school announced in a press release a plan to cut the IDS’ weekly print edition. The announcement was released early — a day before administrators were scheduled to meet with student media leaders and journalism faculty — after the IDS had received a leaked copy of the report. But, still, most students only learned of the plan after the press release.
This is hardly the first time the Media School has made important decisions on behalf of the IDS without first involving the ones it directly affects. And the IDS is hardly the only student newspaper in the country that’s been negatively affected by university overreach. This specific circumstance does not exist within a vacuum — it’s a systemic issue that needs to be considered within a much broader context.
Here at IU, it’s impossible to not view this recent decision from the Media School within the context of all that’s happened in 2024. Even the front page of our Oct. 10 edition closely resembled the vote of no confidence in President Pamela Whitten and Provost Rahul Shrivastav in April. The chaotic response to the encampment was just later that month. The Board of Trustees passed the new Expressive Activity Policy only three months ago, and, since August, Dunn Meadow has been encased by a fence. Amid all this, it’s understandable why students might be left wondering whether the decision to cut the IDS’ print edition is another act of suppression.
Of course, there’s little, if any, evidence of such an assertion. To say the Media School made this decision with malice would be a baseless accusation, and one I’m not certain is even representative of reality. But it’s hard to argue that the optics aren’t terrible. There’s a certain image of the IU administration that already exists, and this infringement on a historical student newspaper only perpetuates that image.
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I’m reminded of The Battalion, Texas A&M University’s student newspaper, publishing its “Print is not dead” editorial in 2022. The column came after the A&M administration attempted to cease the weekly print publication of the paper, an attempt that would, in time, prove a failure. The public was overwhelmingly in support of the student journalists, and The Battalion still distributes a weekly edition today.
“It’s not the administration’s decision to tell us if we can or cannot print,” the editorial board wrote then. “It’s not its place to tell us we can or cannot do anything.”
The IDS is in a bit of a different position from The Battalion because it’s considered a university auxiliary, not a student organization, which means the paper makes its own money and pays all the salaries and benefits for professional staff members, as well as each student staffer’s paycheck. However, at the same time, because it’s an auxiliary organization, all fundraising efforts must be approved by the university administration, which limits its ability to raise as much money as it needs. And it’s also true that, this past summer, the university cleared the paper’s nearly $1 million debt. In other words, while we are editorially independent, we’re not financially independent, making it difficult to be totally free from any key decision the university makes out of monetary concern.
In fact, a study from the University of Florida’s Brechner Freedom of Information Project released in February shows about 56% of student newspapers across the country receive some sort of direct or allocated funding from their university. While this funding has almost certainly helped many papers stay afloat, and it’s impossible to say what the student media landscape might look like without it, it’s also very obviously an invitation for university overreach.
In 2017, then IDS Editor-in-Chief Jamie Zega reported that the Media School had forced the early resignation of former Director of Student Media Ron Johnson, a decision then Dean James Shanahan said was out of “financial consideration.”
“If our charter is revised on terms by administrators with students’ ‘best interests’ in mind, we could go from a dean simply moving the director’s resignation up a month to eventual loss of independence from the University,” Zega wrote.
The charter she’s referring to is our revised Student Media Charter, adopted and approved in 2005. It does several things, but, most importantly, it reiterates the responsibility of the editor-in-chief to make all final decisions regarding editorial matters. Make no mistake: cutting the IDS’ weekly print edition, without input from the IDS itself, does seriously compromise the paper’s editorial independence. By making this decision for us, the Media School is deciding, to an extent, the sort of content we can publish and the way in which we can publish it.
Student newspapers can be an inconvenience for colleges. They’re uniquely positioned to report on the failings — and, lest they be forgotten, the successes — of their parent institution. They can, in other words, be the gadfly, a constant ache in the side of the university. And that is precisely what they should be. And when the university suddenly understands it has the power to pick off the gadfly, whether out of genuine financial concern or not, we lose a vital aspect of student life and, ultimately, a vital aspect of a healthy academic ecosystem.
Joey Sills (he/him) is a senior studying English, comparative literature and political science.
