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Newspaper is free to read — to a point
Every Friday, Advocate staff members drag themselves out of bed and show up at MHCC to deliver newspapers to the various newspaper stands and drop-spots around campus. The do this because their goal is to inform and educate the college community about what is happening around campus.
Last Friday, after about 100 newspapers were delivered to each of three major sites on campus — just outside the bookstore, the library, and the Vista Dining Center — those papers mysteriously disappeared. We'd like to think they vanished into the hands of our news-thirsty readers, but on a week-in, week-out basis we know it takes longer than a few hours to clean out our newsstands.
This isn't the first time this has happened here at MHCC; it has happened at other colleges in the Pacific Northwest as well. As The Student Press Law Center points out, newspaper theft is a crime. While The Advocate is a free publication and that might be a motivation to a newspaper thief, case law shows that free or not, newspaper theft is still a prosecutable crime. Possible criminal charges for theft of student newspapers are larceny, petty theft, criminal mischief, or destruction of property.
Beyond the random possibilities of what might have happened Friday —a homeless person needs fire kindling or there was a huge papier-mache project in the art department — one must scan the pages of the paper for clues and motivation for what appears to be a theft.
Last week, an opinion piece ran as a letter to the editor stating that the Associated Student Government feels students were left out of the faculty contract negotiation discussions by both sides. A few people may have been perturbed by this guest column but would they have felt it necessary (albeit not effective) to lower the chances of readers getting to read it? A story about the Jazz Band trip to Taiwan might have been considered controversial by some, but enough to warrant stealing papers? A story about a lack of progress in the above-mentioned contract negotiations might not have been popular — but cause for lifting several hundred issues of the campus newspaper?
There are other options available besides resorting to censorship and theft. The one we heavily encourage: write a letter to the editor.
Whatever the motivation, the editors-in-chief of The Advocate take this very seriously and we have legal options available and judicial precedent on our side. It is also worth remembering that all our offerings can also be read weekly on the web at www.advocate-online.net. Finally, and most important, freedom of expression is a two-way street and anyone who wants to retain their rights must be big enough to grant those same rights to others.
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.