daily nebraskan
page 5
friday, January 25. 1980
Stuadeint control . .
Continued from page 4
This new Publications Committee, as of January 1972
is composed of five students selected by the student
senate, two faculty members selected by the Committee
on Committees of the Faculty Senate and two profession,
al journalists selected from outside the university by the
chancellor alone. All of the above vote. Also there is a
professional journalist who serves as a non-voting adviser,
and who reports directly to the Chancellor. The chancel
lor is the designated liaison between the Publications
Board and the Board of Regents. It is now appropriate to
quote Thomas Jefferson and talk about control.
The Student Fee Controversy pamphlet concluded that
it was the "anti-war, anti-administration, anti-foreign
policy editorials and reportage that substantially contri
buted to the drawing up of student press guidelines,
(p. viii.) I would maintain that the drawing up of such
guidelines hardly leaves the autonomy of the Daily
Nebraskan intact. Instead, since January 1972, the
direction of the Daily Nebraskan has been significantly
changed, and hot towards a freer press. Since January
1972, the newspaper has been milder, more docile and less .
inclined to be irksome to the Regents or the university ad
ministration. There have been interesting exceptions to
this new definition of journalistic freedom. In fall 1978,
the chief editor was Carla Engstrom. Under her editorship,
the paper was openly hostile to the administration and
their absolute control of the university. She criticized the
tuition increases and so successfully exposed the
characters of the present Regents through investigative re
porting, that again there was discussion of further limiting
the power of the Dairy Nebraskan. In an interview
conducted that semester with Regent Prokop,Prokop said
the Daily Nebraskan "breaks all journalistic ethics in
their reporting the news. Because of this tendency, he
recommended the newspaper be self-supporting. "If you
go on your own and take the responsibility for the paper,
you can write what you wish and any lawsuit which might
come up will not be involved with the Board of Regents
but with the people who write the paper. When Carla
Engstrom was editor, we were informed that Regent
Kermit Wagner was given a Presidential pardon in 1960
for grain-scale ticket fixing conviction in 1954.
The point is not that students lost interest in political
and social problems in the seventies, but that deliberate
invasions were made into their autonomy over student
fees, and the ways in which they may edit and run their
publications. Historical evidence proves it was more than
just disinterest and changing moods that accounted for
the disparity of student input. Measuring precisely how
much was lost and witnessing the subtle erosion of our
rights as students is alarming. But the real point remains -that
it isn't our fault this university is failing and that we
have no input on its tendencies. Effectively, our voice was
silenced eight years ago, and we have yet to recover from
the intimidation. The issue is not one of control, but of
who has it. If we are unable to determine the precise
extent and effect of the Regents decisions on student
rights in the last decade because data is inadequate, we
still must face the fact that we've lost what we once had.
And that is a loss that any triumphant words about
student freedom of the press only mock. We've lost free
dom we once had.
It was in this context that I recommended "more
student control of the Daily Nebraskan, I would like to
abide by the 1918 Regents resolution as a minimum. But
presently, the Editor's quotation of the resolution was a
nostalgic longing for the independent past, I want to re
turn to pre-December 1971 standards, and one way I felt
of achieving better balance, for equality on the issue of
who influences the Daily Nebraskan, was for ASUN to be
granted a weekly column, Such a request seems to me not
an opportunity for bias, but an effort at equality. Perhaps
there are better ideas. If so, let's hear them and not the
pious application of the words of Thomas Jefferson, A
final proposal which I might endorse if all else is
unfeasible, would center on the Daily Nebraskan being a
non-affiliated student newspaper, totally self-supporting
like Regent Prokop suggests, and a newspaper therefore
totally free of administrative advice and the attitudes of
an ASUN senator,
Tim Rinne
Graduate Senator ASUN
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