Â鶹´«Ã½IOS

UT Dallas is at war with its student journalists.

After the longtime student newspaper The Mercury published unflattering coverage of the university’s response to pro-Palestinian protests on campus, administrators began a months-long campaign of retaliation. They  the editor-in-chief, refused to pay journalists as agreed, and even  articles on the Mercury website.

And as everybody but a college administrator would expect, their efforts to keep the paper silent and the student body ignorant of the school’s misdeeds have only backfired.

Undeterred, the student staff of The Mercury created The Retrograde, a wholly independent publication. But when the Retrograde tried to distribute its new issues around campus, administrators  the newsstands that would be used to distribute it. That’s why Â鶹´«Ã½IOS went to campus, in person, to hand out copies of the paper and tell students about the school’s sordid efforts to quash student expression.

Â鶹´«Ã½IOS and The Retrograde planned to hold an event the following day to celebrate the triumph of these student journalists over censorship. And Texas has a  requiring public universities to allow student groups to bring in guest speakers. So Gutierrez told the university he planned to bring Â鶹´«Ã½IOS Program Officer Dominic Coletti as a guest speaker. The administrators, resistant to allowing any critical speech on campus, told Gutierrez that only registered student organizations could invite guest speakers. And since UT Dallas has conveniently refused to recognize The Retrograde, Coletti could not speak on campus.

Â鶹´«Ã½IOS then hand-delivered a second letter to administrators, explaining that UT Dallas’ policy ignores and violates state law. The university ignored that letter, too. So at the event, Gutierrez read the address Coletti had planned to give, detailing UT Dallas’s abuses and The Retrograde’s resilience.

This absurd affair illustrates the malicious impact censorship can have on freedom of expression. UT Dallas administrators seem determined to continue on their lawless power trip, but they cannot silence the voices of the campus’ determined student journalists. And as everybody but a college administrator would expect, their efforts to keep the paper silent and the student body ignorant of the school’s misdeeds have only backfired.

Now, more students know of the university’s dirty dealings than ever before. And they’re letting administrators know censorship should not be bigger in Texas. You can, too.