Despite the campus newspaper enduring a forced print hiatus of only 15 days, students perceive a marked increase in skepticism towards the administration and their ability to exercise free speech. Prospective students reconsider attending.
Over the past few weeks, Indiana University made the rounds for directives that limited the autonomy of its student-run campus newspaper: The Indiana Daily Student.
On Oct. 14, IU fired former Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush after he refused to limit the Oct. 16 issue to just Homecoming content. The following day, the administration announced its decision to cut the IDS’s print capabilities, citing budgetary concerns. After significant backlash and national attention, IU reinstated the printing power of the IDS on Oct. 30. Their next issue will be printed on Nov. 20.
Rodenbush is now suing IU for wrongful termination in alleged violation of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Despite IU’s backtracking, first-semester law and public policy major Cole Dangler says the fact such policies existed at all has broken trust between the administration and student body.
“I don’t know a single student who has a favorable thing to say about the current IU administration,” Dangler said. “Across the board, I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s not functioning as it should be and there is distrust. So, in my personal opinion, it makes me not respect the things that they say or do. The policies that they enact feel fake, and they feel like there are hidden motives there. At the end of the day, they’ve demonstrated time and time again that they’re not for the students.”
First-semester finance major Ayaan Nadeem, who was editor-in-chief of HiLite News, said school newspapers serve as hyper-local journalism. They’re how the majority of students get information about campus news. As a result, any action taken to limit university newspapers will raise suspicions about what information that administration might want to block from print, he said.
Nadeem himself witnessed a shift in student confidence about expression on campus as a result of IU’s recent directives.
“I’m involved in a couple of other student organizations and they were saying, ‘Guys we have to be more careful about following all the rules because if [IU] can shut down the IDS, they could easily shut down everybody else,’” Nadeem said.
In a similar sentiment, Dangler said he’s noticed a duality where students are angry, but also feel a need to exercise caution in structured spaces.
“I think as someone who’s in the student body, the conversations I’m having with my peers are more emboldened,” Dangler said. “We’re all obviously seeing what’s happening. I think when it comes to these institutions, like what faculty says about what they’re teaching, and what clubs do, then I think they are incredibly under pressure to fit a narrative or to not step out of line.”
Both Dangler and Nadeem said they could see how IU’s recent actions could affect who enrolls in the future.
Evelyn Foster, high-school senior and editor-in-chief of the Acumen, said IU is no longer her top choice to study communications.
“I heard a lot of things about IU taking away freedom of speech from students,” Foster said. “I saw that, I can’t remember the name of the news journal, but IU was ranked as the worst in the country for freedom of speech.I decided to look into it a little bit more. I was very disillusioned by IU as a whole, when I read about all of the protests being silenced.
I was even considering overlooking that until [Rodenbush] was fired and the print newspaper was removed entirely.”
“In this instance, I don’t think any kind of grace should be allocated for the (IU) administration. Even though it was a failed attempt to censor free speech, free speech was still at risk. And I don’t think any sort of leeway should be granted to an administration that can freely and ably take away free speech just like that.”
Looking to the future, Dangler said the power of the consumer could serve as a powerful tool for reform across universities.
“We pay these people to do what they’re doing and at some point, we have to tell them, this is not what we’re here for and this is not what we’ve signed up to fund.”