As an institution devoted to the free and open exchange of ideas, the university must protect even the kind of speech we might otherwise find distasteful or abhorrent.
But in the case of the Carrollton Record, Hopkins' self-proclaimed "conservative news source," the most egregious wrongdoing was not its embrace of unpopular ideas or even its zeal in promoting and protecting those ideas, but its irresponsible, politically driven attempt to sensationalize unsupported claims, simply in an attempt to draw attention to itself.
This past May the Record published a cover story titled,"Deepthroating Hopkins: How Your Tuition Hike Pays the Gay Porn Industry." The article suggested that the additional funding reaped from a university-wide tuition hike last year was used to pay for and distribute gay pornography at a DSAGA event featuring Chi Chi LaRue, a famous porn director who is a transvestite.
Although the content of the Record's article criticized the university, not individual members of DSAGA, the Record's cover image featured Facebook photos of DSAGA members without their consent. These individuals had identified themselves as DSAGA members on the private Facebook network, which is only open to members of the university. By publishing in the public domain information that these students had only made available in private, the Record blatantly violated their right to privacy. The cover image was a thinly veiled attempt to inflame homophobic sentiments against individual students.
When the university removed the Carrollton Record from dormitories, the Record ran to conservative media outlets, crying "censorship!" The Record's editors have repeatedly portrayed themselves as a persecuted minority dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment. Simultaneously the paperdecries the free speech of an organization whose views diverge from those of Record editors. There's a word for that: hypocrisy.
We find it disappointing that the university has decided not to take a clear position on this controversy. Regardless of the administration's motivation for removing stacks of the Carrollton Record's May issue from residential buildings, we believe it was ultimately counterproductive to discourage a formal investigation into the matter. The university had a rare opportunity to open a dialogue about what constitutes free speech on a college campus, but it chose to avoid the issue.
As a result, the university's true position on what is allowable content for a student publication to distribute on campus is still unclear. But what is clear is that the editors of the Carrollton Record have little regard for constructive discourse, instead offering a cocktail of journalistic irresponsibility and righteous indignation.
