Student newspaper theft waning, but still vexing

Maya Dollarhide
Special to The Freedom Forum Online

02.18.00

Printer-friendly page

Although student newspaper theft has declined over the last few school years, it remains a concern for many universities and student press advocates nationwide, says Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Goodman said only two or three such thefts had been reported this year, which would be statistically in keeping with the past few school years. He estimated there had been 12-15 incidents of reported newspaper thefts in each of the 1997-98 and 1998-99 academic years. SPLC takes pains to document thefts and does not claim to have hard, up-to-the minute numbers, Goodman said.

College newspaper theft peaked in the mid to late '90s, according to the SPLC. During the 1996-97 school year there were 25 such incidents; 25 in 1995-96; 30 thefts during 1994-95; 37 in 1993-94; and 22 incidents in 1992-93.

"The problem with newspaper theft on campuses is that the culprits are rarely caught," Goodman said. "If someone hears of newspaper theft happening and they realize that there are no punishments for this sort of crime, people are more likely to do it."

Goodman said that in the last few years, some of the petty newspaper thieves have been caught and punished in court. For instance, last year at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 2,000 copies of the student newspaper, The Echo, were stolen by members of the university's wrestling team. They are now going through university judicial proceedings, according to the Winter 1999-2000 Student Press Law Center Report.

A similar incident involving the athletic department at Ohio State University occurred last October. Dave Golowenski, the faculty adviser of The Lantern, OSU's campus newspaper, said hundreds of copies of special issues of the paper were stolen and dumped into garbage cans one weekend after the paper ran a cover story about the OSU football team's losing streak.

And it wasn't the students doing the dumping.

"It was some zealous bureaucrats that dumped the papers," said Golowenski, from The Lantern's pressroom in Columbus, Ohio. "We were supposed to hand out special sections of the newspapers at a football game and some people on the athletic board thought the cover, which said the team had three losses, was not good."

When The Lantern filed a complaint with the athletic board, the athletic adviser acknowledged what had happened and agreed to pay the paper $2,000 for the losses.

"But nobody got to see the cover, so in fact the athletic department got what they wanted," added Golowenski.

The Lantern was also in the midst of another controversy last year. When Bob Hewitt, a student-staff member, drew an editorial cartoon poking fun at the Women's Studies department on campus, students reportedly protested by stealing some papers. But according to Golowenski, the cartoon was published in error.

"The cartoon got in as an oversight," said Golowenski. "We were never going to run the cartoon; it wasn't clever or funny. It was offensive."

The cartoon was part of a series Hewitt had been slated to do for the paper. But when the staff saw the cartoons, they decided not to continue the series. "Hewitt went straight to the local media and raised a big stink," Golowenski added.

Hewitt was asked to leave the paper as a result of his appeal to the news media. "He was not fired for his editorial cartoons," groaned Golowenski. "We are still getting phone calls from people protesting a situation that never happened. He was mad, so he tried to make the paper look foolish."

As for the theft of The Lantern papers that ran the cartoon, the culprits were never identified and there is disagreement over whether any newspapers were actually stolen. According to Tim Parade, an editor on the paper, several papers were stolen. But the paper's business office said there was no evidence of theft.

Goodman hopes that the downswing of newspaper theft on campus will continue through the 2000-2001 school year.

"We are hoping that university officials will condemn paper thefts. The student press needs to stand up to the administration and the thieves," he said.