MR. DORGAN COMES TO TEXAS

Freedom of the press, as a time-honored doctrine of Americanism, is at the present day a very nebulous matter. Newspapers are in theory at liberty to say what they choose about any person and any issue; in practice they are controlled by partisanship, in politics, and by the "entrenched greed" that owns them, in general policies, However, up to the present, there has been no actual censorship as such--no board of gimlet-eyed and thimble-brained sycophants to delete everything that might be of interest to a reader with more than half a mind. At the University of Texas such a situation now exists; and, incredibly, has existed for five months.

Last July the Board of Regents of this university ordered that the liberty of the Daily Texan, the student daily newspaper, to print what it chose should be virtually annihilated. Their dictatorial decree, enforced by an Editorial Advisory Committee, excluded from the news and editorial columns all "libelous material, improper personal attacks, reckless accusations, opinions not based on fact, inaccurate statements, articles on national, state and local political questions, indecencies, material detrimental to the good conduct of the student body, and material prejudicial to the best interest of the University; and any material in conflict with good taste or wise editorial management." Presumably stories of successful football games are permissible.

A college newspaper is primarily for the benefit of the college students; its duty, like that of any newspaper, is to report the college news in an unbiassed fashion. However, if it happens to be the policy of the paper to devote considerable space to national or state news, it should be allowed to report it as it sees fit, always provided that it handles only material that it knows about. Perhaps not quite as important a function, but certainly one that cannot be overlooked, is that exercised by the editorial columns in reflecting student opinion. If this is to be stifled and strangled by bigoty and short-sightedness of the type that fostered the Teachers Oath Bill in Massachusetts; if the members of one of the country's large universities--most of whom, it was found in a poll, were over the age of twenty-one--are not considered capable or worthy of speaking their minds, then it is time to bring out into the open the uniforms and armbands that are the proper acoutrements of such folly.