Toppling the 'Heights'

The Heights, Boston College's student newspaper, is currently fighting for its life against determined efforts by the B.C. administration to silence it. Since February, the administrators have cut off the Heights's official subsidy--which by a previous agreement was to continue until next year. They've prosecuted two Heights reporters for "illegally obtaining information and illegally possessing information", withdrawn recognition from the paper as an official student organization, evicted the paper from its office on campus, and threatened prosecution for trespass against the editors if they continue to conduct their business on campus.

Such official attempts to silence student publications are not new. In the past year, bureaucrat-censors have imposed censorship on the Daily Texan at the University of Texas and forced the resignation of three editors of the Daily Californian at Berkeley. Palo Alto police ransacked the offices of the Stanford Daily in an attempt to confiscate pictures to use as evidence against a group of demonstrators. Many college functionaries--like BC's President W. Seavey Joyce--and public officials--like Massachusetts Attorney General Robert Quinn, who prosecuted the Heights editors--apparently believe that freedom of the press is a right reserved for those with the capital to operate a commercial daily, and proceed as if the First Amendment contained an invisible clause exempting students from exercising the rights it guarantees.

The persecution of the Heights--and in particular the use of the courts to silence and intimidate college journalists--is a disgrace. The Rev. Edward J. Hanrahan, BC's dean of Students, says that the Heights lacked "editorial responsibility." But, in fact, it was for exercising its true editorial responsibility--informing its readers of the machinations which BC bigwigs were conducting--that the Heights incurred the wrath of the censors. Part of the furor which led to the lockout stemmed from the paper's publication of "obscene" material; but what really nettled the BC administration, we suspect, was a series of muckraking exposes in the best journalistic tradition. The Heights revealed that the BC administrators had "inadvertently" flimflammed a student scholarship fund out of $3 million and diverted the funds to other purposes; that the school had incurred an unannounced deficit of $10 million; that the University had made secret plans to quash student demonstrations--and suddenly the administration felt compelled to phase out funding for the Heights.

Then came the snapper. The Heights published last February a full transcript of a meeting in which BC's Board of Trustees discussed ways of preventing the University's Vice-president, considered a "radical" by the businessmen and divines who order the affairs of Boston College, from exercising authority. The publication--whatever its source--is an example of "editorial responsibility" in its highest sense. It afforded the students a glimpse into the political bias and secretive operation of the school's governing board--proceedings which had been as dark to the students of BC as the manipulations of the Harvard Corporation are to most students here.

The administration prosecuted the reporters who wrote the story for "illegally obtaining information and illegal possession of information." "Illegal possession of information": BC's pious masters, so outraged over "obscenity" in the columns of the Heights, should ponder the obscenity of such a charge.

The Heights is financially independent now, and determined to continue publishing. Independence is a valuable condition, for it exempts them from all but the most blatant of interference.

The administration owes the Heights an apology, full recognition as a student organization, and an invitation back to the grounds until it can find suitable housing near the campus. As for the Heights, we wish it many more years of troubling the mighty and afflicting the comfortable.