Freedom of College Newspaper at Stake In Columbia Spectator's Campus Battle

This is a story that began several months ago but which may receive a new installment in a few weeks. It involves the Columbia University Spectator, the undergraduate newspaper on Morningside Heights in New York City--and it involves freedom of the collegiate press, too.

The Spectator this summer took, or was forced to take, a major step towards losing its independence. Here are the facts:

Spec's constitution provides in properly legal language that the paper's Managing Board shall appoint its successors toward the end of its term in office. Spec's most recent board had difficulty in agreeing on a new editor-in-chief last spring so it asked Columbia College's Emergency Council, wartime student governing body, to mediate the dispute.

Glad to assist, the Emergency Council picked Edward Gold; the choice was accepted by the Spec staff, which then drew up a slate of Managing Board editors to serve under Gold and presented the list, as a matter of form, to the Council for its approval.

Quite unexpectedly, the Council rejected the proposed Board, insinuating that political intrigue had played a part in the rapid elevation of Byron Dobell, second-in-command-on the new Board. Spec editors, resenting the Council's implication and interference, countered that the elevation was made on grounds of "ability, initiative, service, originality, and sincerity."

The chairman of the Council, Jack Bainton, then asserted that the Spec board had not demonstrated its capability to select its successors. This was on June 8; a four-to-three majority decided the Council's policy.

McKnight and KCAC Enter Ring

The Spec Board is now out, because the issue of choosing a new Managing board for Spec was submitted by the Council to the King's Crown Advisory Committee, which runs Columbia's extra-curricular activities, on June 11 and the KCAC took selection of the new board out of the hands of the old board. From now on the KCAC, in which Associate Dean Nicholas McD, McKnight and other faculty members have a dominant voice, would call the tune.

In a "Protest issue" June 13, the Spectator attacked the Emergency Council's and the King's Crown Advisory Committee's, infringement of its independence: "An intolerable situation has arisen. A willful attempt by Emergency Council is being made to grasp the reins of Spectator editorial policy so tightly that Spectator will never again be the master of its own fate.... The entire Spectator staff, Managing Board, and Associate News Board, bitterly protest this action. No one, neither the Council nor a committee of King's Crown Advisory Board has a right to approve of Spectator's editorial policy in advance. If this is allowed to occur, it will be the first step to domination of all other extra-curricular activities on Campus."

The leaders of Columbia's other extra-curricular groups backed the protest. The Jester, undergraduate humor magazine, published a front page editorial, but the Emergency Council denied distribution of the issue until a mimeographed sheet had been stapled to its cover.

Jester Muzzled

Entitled "Let Freedom Ring" and signed by the Emergency Council, the stapled muzzle proclaimed in patronizing tone that the "function of Jester "is to be a humorous magazine, in the New Yorker Style, but the editor has chosen this issue as his personal medium for an adulterated discussion of a matter which has already been settled.

"Emergency Council regrets that the new students are not getting a true example of the Jester Magazine. The issue might have been donated to the scrap drive, but we prefer to use it as an illustration of the genuine freedom of the press that exists on the Columbia College Campus."

On its third page, Jester had run another editorial disparaging "Your New Emergency Council" as a student governing body unrepresentative of the students: "Easiest-method of joining the Emergency Council is to browbeat ten students to sign a petition for one of those quiet elections which slip by every term or so. Since competition is rarely keen, this eliminating process often leads to what is known loosely as election."

Early in August, after three more issues of Spec had been put out by an interim board, the still-adamant staff announced that it would discontinue publication until fall, when it would receive reinforcements (returning editors) in its fight against the Council. But the Council wasn't sitting still; it named a five-man panel, including two V-12ers, to edit Jester.

Introducing the New Editor

Soon after, the Council approved a new Managing Board for Spec, selected by KCAC. Named as editor-in-chief of the new board was Stanley Smith, a tall, husky V-12er who is acting captain of Lou Little's football eleven, captain of Columbia's crew, and target of the ousted Spec men.

Smith, who comes from a little town outside of Syracuse and went to Rensalear Polytechnic Institute before the Navy sent him to Columbia, has this to say about his new job:

"When I first tried to come out for, Spec I was told to go see somebody out in Brooklyn. I was given the impression that Spec was all sewed up and didn't need or want me. The Navy doesn't give a guy much chance to run out to Brooklyn, anyway.

"When I was co-captain of the crew, we beat Navy, which was pretty good going, and were all set to face Cornell. Spec ran a story about how we were going to race Cornell and it didn't say anything about our beating Navy until the very last paragraph.

"The big trouble with Spec and all the other publications around here was that they were run by a little crowd of ininsiders and their stuff didn't make sense to anyone who didn't know Jack and Bill and Bob and all their nicknames."

Here's the situation as it stood at the end of Columbia's short summer season. In this Corner we have the boys kicked into the back room by the KCAC. They say independent collegiate journalism at Columbia has been dealt a death blow by Dean McKnight and his rubber-stamp "undergraduate" body, and they have a lot of allies among Columbia's student leaders.

In the opposite corner we have Stanley Smith and Harry Coleman, who were five-weeks-old Spec candidates when KCAC rocketed them to the top. They say there's another side to the story.

Chance for Come-back?

What chance the old Managing Board has to recoup its set-back it is hard to discover. They still have an oar in officially, and sources associated with the "outs" say the situation is far from settled and predict a renewal of the fight this fall, with a possibility of two rival Specs.

The Emergency Council says the issue is settled, but even Smith anticipates new battles. "The old board will need plenty of money, though, to publish a Spec privately," says Smith; "Mr. Hubbard (Benjamin Hubbard, head of KCAC) will okay our printing bills and he won't okay anyone else's."

Referee in the dispute will apparently be Dean McKnight, who grows purple when it is suggested that the Emergency Council is his rubber stamp. When Columbia's employees' union struck for higher pay and better working conditions the Spectator compared wage scales at other New York colleges and came out in support of the union. There are certain things which college administrative officials don't like to see in print. People are wondering whether McKnight will continue to use his weight to muzzle Spec.

(If he does, the last editorial voice in the ivy league colleges will be stilled. The Princeton Bulletin, a miniature thrice-weekly sheet prepared by a secretary in the Dean's Office, has replaced the daily Princetonian. Yale's publicity office issues, with student assistance, a News Digest each week. The Harvard CRIMSON, realizing that rapid turnover and a younger student body discourages a mature and consistent editorial policy, publishes, still independently, the voice-less Service News each week. Dartmouth's position is similar to Harvard's, though the Log, successor to the Indian, is slanted more Navy-wise.