Trashing Free Speech: Oregon State Univ. Dumps Student Paper Without Notice
Distribution bins of the conservative student paper, The Liberty, dumped by Oregon State University officials.
A recognized Oregon State University student organization that publishes an independent student paper found its distribution bins confiscated and thrown next to a dumpster without notice by university officials who disagree with the papers viewpoints.
The Liberty, is a conservative paper published by the OSU Student Alliance that contains articles that aren’t usually favored by university officials. Mysteriously, their circulation containers were missing, even though they had been chained down. Another student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, remained untouched.
The students enlisted the help of police to find out what happened to their property. Upon questioning, OSU administrators admitted they took the bins because they claimed the campus had too many which made the grounds look cluttered. The bins, full of the latest issue were taken to the campus storage yard and dumped.
The Liberty has been written, edited, published and distributed by OSU students on the campus since 2002 and have been circulated in campus bins since 2005 — when they received permission from the university. Now, however, the school claims that The Liberty is not a “student publication.” The Liberty is saying they were silenced because of their views.
On Tuesday, the Alliance Defense Fund, which recently launched “Speak Up Movement” encouraging students and facility to stand up for their constitutional rights from institutions who are trying to silence them, filed a lawsuit against the institution on behalf of the student group.
“Students with viewpoints that don’t happen to be favored by university officials shouldn’t be silenced for their beliefs,” said ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Heather Gebelin Hacker, of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. “The argument that the independent student paper’s bins were confiscated to ‘clean up’ the campus is not believable when none of the bins of the daily student newspaper were taken, and no notice was given to the paper.”
Lawsuit: Oregon State University Students Alliance v. Ray, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division.
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