Free Republic

Oregon State University has paid $1,000 plus $100,000 in legal fees to a former student to settle a lawsuit over the confiscation of distribution boxes for a conservative-leaning student newspaper. Supporters of the newspaper called The Liberty sued the school in 2009, alleging the university president and other school officials granted the official campus newspaper numerous bins while restricting The Liberty’s distribution. The suit alleged that school officials confiscated distribution bins for The Liberty and tossed them onto a trash heap. The bins, which contained copies of the paper, were allegedly removed without notice and thrown next to a dumpster....

Some of us Pennsylvania Dutchmen have long regarded Bucknell as the Berkeley of the Keystone State. In issue after issue, the crack staff of student reporters at The Counterweight alternative student newspaper shows us how right we are. Published privately by the Bucknell University Conservatives Club, The Counterweight offers up investigative stories of the underside of college life there that the regular campus newspaper treads lightly upon, that is, if they cover such happenings at all. “Bucknell currently claims to have 402 faculty members and 392 administrators,” according to the latest issue of The Counterweight. “The university has rightly added...

Some campus journalism is becoming quite good, particularly on the alternative, largely conservative, side. Part of this results from the donor base of alternative college newspapers vis-à-vis official organs. That is, while the former largely survive on outside contributions, the latter are usually dependent on school funding. Thus, while student journalists working for their house papers strive for independence and objectivity, they eventually have to confront the “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing” phenomenon. Alternative university newspapers are free from this potential constraint by college officials. The Carolina Review, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,...