Last November, students at the University of Maryland at College Park were seen stealing 10,000 copies of the university's free daily student newspaper, the Diamondback. They replaced them with flyers that read: "Due to its racist nature, the Diamondback will not be available today -- read a book!" African-Americans at the university had consistently complained about the Diamondback's coverage of the black community.

Six months later, Maryland legislators passed a law, the first of its kind, making it a misdemeanor to steal free newspapers. Penalties include a possible sixty-day jail term and a maximum $ 500 fine.

At about the same time that Maryland legislators were hammering out their bill, 2,000 copies of Pittsburgh State's Collegio; 1,000 copies of Nebraska's Midland Lutheran College paper, The Midland; 800 copies of West Virginia's Marshall University paper, the Statesman; 200 copies of the University of Detroit Mercy's Varsity News; and 50 copies of East Tennessee State's The East Tennessean were stolen and trashed.

According to the Washington, D.C.based Student Press Law Center (SPLC), a legal-assistance agency for student journalists, at least twenty such incidents were reported in the 1992-93 school year, and at least thirty-five in 1993-94, up from a previous yearly average of three or four. More often than not, those responsible have been members of political activist groups or minority groups who say coverage of them is unfair, but not all the incidents have been political. At Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, campus administrators were accused of removing papers because of articles that they felt cast a negative light on the schools. University of Rochester fraternity brothers were accused of stealing thousands of copies of Campus Times because it ran the fraternity's secret three-word motto in a classified ad.

Probably the most high-profile case was the theft of nearly 14,000 copies of The Daily Pennsylvanian, an entire press run, at the University of Pennsylvania in April 1993. The thieves, who called themselves "the black community," left notes on the empty bins saying the theft was meant to protest "institutional racism" perpetuated by the newspaper and the university. The theft apparently was in response to a conservative columnist's denunciation of affirmative action and questioning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s heroism. The students who took the papers were caught but not punished.

The Student Press Law Center recommends criminal prosecution as the most potent method for fighting newspaper theft. "Only the threat of serious punishment will make the next potential thief think twice," says Mark Goodman, the center's executive director. Yet these thefts are rarely prosecuted, even, in a few cases, where the thieves have been caught red-handed by photographers placed at distribution sites.

At Dartmouth last year, when copies of the conservative Dartmouth Review were repeatedly stolen from dorms, the dean of students said those who took the papers had violated no law or code of student conduct. Dartmouth's spokesman, Alex Huppe, went so far as to call the paper "litter" and "abandoned property" that should be treated as lightly as "menus and free samples of soap."

Publishers argue that their campus papers do have monetary value, that advertisers would be reluctant to place ads in future editions if they thought there was a good chance no one would ever see them. Yet the most frequent explanation prosecutors give for not pressing charges is that one cannot steal something that is free, as most student newspapers are, that papers left in distribution bins around campus become, in a sense, abandoned property.

The Washington Post took that line in an editorial last January, commenting on the Maryland legislature's determination to punish offenders. "It can be argued, in fact, that scooping up copies of publications -- whether to send a message or protest one -- may in itself be a form of free speech," the Post wrote. "But you don't need even to get to that point to conclude that trying to draft, enact, and enforce regulations criminalizing the removal of free newspapers is neither an easy nor a worthy pursuit."

But others take a harsher view of censorship by trashing. Two students at Penn State who plea-bargained charges of theft, receiving stolen property, and criminal conspiracy in the summer of 1993, agreed to enter a rehabilitation program and to pay more than $ 1,000 to the student newspaper, The Lionhearted. Editors at the paper also requested that the two students read Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel about a firefighter assigned by superiors the task of burning "inappropriate" literature.

CORRECTION-DATE: November 1994 / December 1994

CORRECTION: In the September/October issue, Marshall University's campus paper was misidentified: the correct name is the Parthenon.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe