Advocates pulled; Derr cites miscommunication

On Friday, April 1, the Advocate published an April Fool’s edition, which was greeted with a mixed reception due to a satirical story on the school’s upcoming attempt to pass a general obligation bond measure.

Mt. Hood President Debbie Derr said she asked the college mailroom on Friday to secure about 80 issues that are mailed weekly outside the campus, to local high school and college journalism programs and others.

In the meantime, multiple school officials, including board member Jim Zordich, and a mailroom employee who said he was instructed to “pull everything you see that looks like this,” confiscated hundreds of issues of the Advocate from all distribution boxes on campus, first on Friday afternoon, and again on Monday afternoon after they had been restocked.

The Advocate staff investigated and found they were being held in the MHCC mailroom, upon the president’s request. About 600 issues were taken, minus issues some students did have the chance to obtain.

Derr met with the Advocate editorial staff on Tuesday and explained that she would “never attempt to censor” the newspaper. She said she instead intended to hold the (80-some) issues from being mailed until she could voice her concerns directly to the Advocate staff, but gave no order to take issues directly from the boxes.

She also said Zordich was under no directive from her office to confiscate copies.

“I would never do that,” (act to censor the Advocate), Derr told the newspaper staff.

Derr reiterated: “I would not censor. I would not confiscate. I did hold, because I wanted to talk to you.”

Campus response

But some on the Mt. Hood campus called the officials’ response on April 1 troubling.

“Seizing them is a form of censorship.” said Pat Casey, MHCC social science instructor who has taught journalism previously.

Case law on student newspapers does not distinguish between holding or confiscating, notes the Student Press Law Center, based in Arlington, Va.

Since public colleges are considered an arm of the state, they may not exercise the power of a private publisher over a school newspaper, such as censoring or confiscating. There have been multiple court rulings to back this up (Joyner v. Whiting; Schiff v. Williams; Leuth v. St. Clair Comm. College), the SPLC notes.

The organization’s web page states, at splc.org/page/college-faqs:

“The courts have ruled that if a school creates a student news medium and allows students to serve as editors, the First Amendment drastically limits the school’s ability to censor. Among the censoring actions the courts have prohibited are confiscating copies of publications, requiring prior review, removing objectionable material, limiting circulation, suspending editors and withdrawing or reducing financial support.”

Mixed messages

Derr told the Advocate she was specifically concerned about potential consequences if a reader did not realize a story on the upcoming bond measure was satirical.

“I do not want any mixed messages in the community, period,” said Derr in reference to the lead story titled, “Bond hurdle set high, MHCC unable to clear,” referred to on the cover as “A Bump in the Road.”

Said Derr, “My concern is that this is a mixed message” given the college’s nonstop effort to raise support for the bond measure.

Susie Jones, MHCC Board of Directors chair, said she believed Zordich was thinking along the same lines and took the papers “purely to protect the college.”

A bin filled with the papers removed by Zordich wound up in the  president’s office, by Monday, Derr said. Zordich declined to talk with the Advocate about the episode.

Jones said she is a supporter of journalism and that it is “vital to democracy.” She said Zordich was operating independent of the board, but also that she did not view his actions as censorship.

“Well, maybe that was his freedom of speech; a reaction against somebody else’s freedom of speech,” Jones said.

She said there would be no reprimand from the board issued to Zordich.

On Wednesday, MHCC Board colleague and media firm owner Michael Calcagno said, “I feel as though the college, whether it’s the board, or the administration, or faculty should not be hindering free speech or first amendment rights, and I fully support the Advocate and whatever they decide to publish,” in reference to free speech issues.

Story concerns

The satirical bond story in question was accompanied by a  separate disclaimer on the same page, and all the April Fool’s stories posted online were labeled as such, as well.

In the problematic story, the Advocate wrote that new opinion polls showed the bond losing favor among voters, that the college aborted the effort to pass the measure, and in a tough financial climate accepted a donation from a fictional character named “Yunki Joshida,” and renamed the school in his honor, among other satirical elements.

Learning of administrators’ concerns on April 1, the Advocate agreed to remove the online version of the story by midday.

Derr said that she initially was concerned the satire could be construed as a slight against Junki Yoshida, an actual benefactor of the college, and the fear that it could result in a loss of funds. She told the Advocate on Tuesday she had spoken with Yoshida and was no longer worried about losing his support.

After meeting with the Advocate, Derr issued an all-staff email on Wednesday that reminded MHCC officials, staff, and students that removing issues of the paper “could be viewed as censorship and even theft” and described the unfolding of events as a valuable “learning experience.”

In an interview with The Oregonian on Wednesday, she reiterated support for the Advocate but again faulted the satirical story.

“They spent so much time trying to make this story, this farce about how the bond didn’t pass and on and on, that they did not think,” she told Oregonian writer Andrew Theen.

Moving forward

Other MHCC faculty concurred that it was a learning experience, indeed.

Mt. Hood philosophy instructor Chris Jackson called the school’s action “outrageous.”

Jackson said, “When I was working as a loss prevention agent in college, it wasn’t okay just to return it, (in case of theft). This is something that is obviously theft.”

“Just not liking something is not grounds for suppressing it,” said Casey. He said he had seen the April 1 issue, realized it was a hoax when he saw Yoshida’s name misspelled, which was a “dead giveaway,” but wasn’t aware of any censorship until the president’s all-staff email on Wednesday.

Asked how the school could make reparations, Casey suggested hosting a workshop for high school journalism programs in the area, on the subject of free speech and the press.

Jones concluded at the end of her interview, “Hopefully we can just put this behind us and say this was a little ‘bump in the road.’”