Campus Censorship at Wesleyan

Wesleyan University’s student government is on the verge of dramatically slashing the funds of the university’s most popular student-run newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, in response to an opinions article that it published, titled “Why Black Lives Matters Isn’t What You Think,” by sophomore Bryan Stascavage, according to the Wall Street Journal.Stascavage, a staff writer for The Wesleyan Argus, focused his piece on the “other perspective” of the Black Lives Matter movement. Unlike many who see this movement as honorable, he described it as “not legitimate, or at the very least, hypocritical.” In his article, he addressed counter arguments, expounded upon his arguments and clearly and succinctly stated his opinion: all characteristics of a well-written opinions piece.The only characteristic that separated Stascavage’s piece from many others was this one fact: it was too conservative and too controversial.When I discovered this news, I was in the process of writing a news article for The Exonian that focused on Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and speaker at Climate Action Day, and his protest against Exxon Mobil. This article would relate this uprising against a company which is currently undergoing an immense scandal to the the environmental objectives of Exeter community, both current and past.Instigated by the news of The Wesleyan Argus’ fund cut, I conjured up a situation in my imagination in which I explained McKibben’s one-man insurrection in a very conservative and controversial manner. And I imagined (I also had to imagine that The Exonian was not self-funded) that because of these “errors,” the paper was penalized by a large cut in the fund. In this make-believe situation, I would have caused our paper to completely change its outlook and system to fit the new budget. Furthermore, my precedent would have struck fear in both the editors and writers of our paper. After all, they would now have to detect and eliminate any hint of a conservative or controversial topic.This is what had happened to Stascavage.If this isn’t a demonstration of censorship, I don’t know what is. For obvious reasons, the student government at Wesleyan did not directly report that Stascavage’s opinions piece was the bane of the fund cut. Instead, Alex Garcia, a junior at Wesleyan who proposed the funding overhaul, was quoted in Huffpost College saying that the article was not the sole reason for the student government’s resolution to overhaul the funding of The Wesleyan Argus.Moreover, Garcia had said that although the fund cut will take $17,000 out of the annual $30,000 that The Wesleyan Argus receives each year, the newspaper’s funding will ultimately be “increased dramatically.”Admittedly, it does appear to be true that there are other motives behind this fund cut; however, the recent conservative and controversial article appears to be at the core of the resolution. Why else would the resolution for the cut be proposed around only five days after the publication of the article?Thus, this resolution for the cut begs the following: where does that leave all the other writers of The Wesleyan Argus? Will they now have any incentive to hint at conservative or controversial topics, even if these views are what they believe to be true? Will they feel subjugated by the student government because of funds? Will they have freedom of speech—the first amendment of our country?But what about Exeter? What about The Exonian? How different are we?In the past year, there has been much talk about censorship and its effect on our newspaper. Most recently, The Exonian has published two pieces that attempted to divulge censorship, entitled “Self Censorship: The Anti-Harkness” and “StuCo, Publications, Classes Discuss ‘Self-Censorship.’” In these two articles, the writers, seniors Heather Nelson, Jack Hirsch and Tony Ryou, and upper Henrietta Reily, record a number of experiences about students who have been called in for a meeting with the administration after having written controversial articles.For example, in “StuCo, Publications, Classes Discuss ‘Self-Censorship,’” senior Antonio Guaneas described his meeting with his faculty advisor and dean as “intimidating.” In addition, in “Self Censorship: The Anti-Harkness,” senior Tony Ryou described a situation in which Philip Chang submitted a controversial quote that Director of Admissions Michael Gary responded to in an article of his own.Although the controversy of these articles do line up with that of Stascavage’s, they do not parallel the conservative nature of Stascavage’s. If such a conservative article like Stascavage’s were to be published in The Exonian, would there be any repercussions?In my three years of working for The Exonian, I have interacted with six generations of writers. In these interactions, there have been numerous times when I would hear the worries such as “I’ll get so much hate if I write about this topic, especially at this liberal school.”Writers have gone so far as to say that they imagined many students would abhor them for expressing a conservative view in the paper. Thus, there have been few conservative pieces in our paper.It is true that there is no official censure against students who write conservative pieces, but this fear of an infamous reputation within the public crowd does exist. And The Wesleyan Argus’ experience proves that this fear is legitimate.We may neither agree with Stascavage’s conservative article nor appreciate the way he expressed his ideas. However, does he not, and do we not, have a right to freely, without censorship and censure, express our own opinions?