Student Group's Magazine Barred By UNH Officials

In January, 1948, a faculty committee at the University of New Hampshire banned a proposed magazine of the student Liberal Club. Charging that the faculty was attempting to censor its political beliefs, the Club brought out the publication privately two months later.

The university administration gave several grounds for suppressing the magazine. President Arthur S. Adams said that he had "pointed out to the Club that its constitution did not provide for the issuance of a publication and that the (faculty) committee would not approve a constitutional amendment providing for a publication because in the judgement of the committee the campus already had all the publications it could support."

Francis E. Robinson, director of the university's office of public information, added another reason. In a letter to the CRIMSON, he said that official sanction was also withheld because "the quality of the proposed material did not seem to justify publication."

In the magazine's preface, the Liberal Club editors said, "If progressive students, in defense of their own rights, must resort to a stratagem, let those who occasioned it suffer the odium..." The April, 1948, issue was the only one published by the Club, and there was no further agitation for lifting the official ban.