The Texan

The University of Texas swims in a $240,000,000 endowment fund, a respectable sum which will grow so long as the University's oil and natural gas holdings are profitable. When the University's student paper, The Daily Texan, ran editorials early this month decrying the Fulbright-Harris bill as a giveaway to oil and gas interests, the Texas Board of Regents was upset.

The Regents ordered closer faculty supervision of the editorial page and demanded that political opinions stay out of the paper. The editors immediately howled about censorship and lamented the death of a free press. They warned that the action was just another instance where legislators had stifled free education in state institutions with politically-oriented-views.

The Regents, on the other hand, cited a law which forbids the usage of state funds to influence election or legislation. The Daily Texan, they noted, received state funds.

At first glance the Regents' ruling seemed morally wrong and legally right. As a result, students attacked the Regents' position from the viewpoint of outraged liberals and martyred journalists. But the more effective criticism came later in attacks based on legal grounds.

With praiseworthy calm and research, the Texan's supporters declared that the newspaper receives no money from the state. Rather, they contended, it receives funds from subscriptions and advertising and even makes its own investments. This overlooks the fact that the paper's offices are in a University building. A stronger argument shows that the law does not apply to the newspaper since it pertains only to state employees and agencies; neither heading fits the long-independent Texan. The friends of the free press also held that the law attempts to discourage lobbying or political activity but has no effect on a non-partisan organ of student opinion.

Faced with a barrage of legal and emotional protests, not to mention adverse national press coverage, the Regents have retreated from battle for at least a month, while the matter is analyzed by the University's student-controlled Publications Board, nominal publisher of the Texan. The need to take a stand places faculty members, a minority on the Board, in an awkward position--between sympathy with editor's idealism and fear of the Regents' power.

The Publication Board advised the editors to avoid "facetiousness" in editorials, to allott less space to the controversy and to use good judgment on controversial issues. The editors did not find these restrictions odious and the Regents now reserved comment.

Although a final solution has not been reached, it seems doubtful that both sides will ever be completely happy. The editors will feel uneasy because the conflict is apt to be solved on legal rather than on moral grounds. A legal decision would overlook the original cry of the Texan--"The Texan cannot yield. To do so would be to deny the principle of a campus free from coercion."

Yet the threat has not been removed and the Regents show no intention of doing so. The present prospect of the relationship between Texas and the Texan was described by the head of the school of journalism as a "partnership."

Free thought, it seems, has a price in Texas.