Pacific Lutheran University officials temporarily shut down the student newspaper’s website Friday after editors posted a headline and story that contained profanities.
They reactivated The Mooring Mast’s website about four hours later when student editors agreed to edit the story and headline to remove the bad words.
University spokesman Greg Brewis said the use of profanities on the website, which is hosted on university servers, was detrimental to PLU’s image.
“It was on the university system, and we’re really strict about obscenities on our site,” Brewis said.
The university took no action to pull printed editions of the newspaper, which contained the same story and headline, he said. Those papers hit the stands Thursday.
Jack Sorensen, an editor at The Mooring Mast, said he and his colleagues agreed to acquiesce to the administration’s demands but plan to launch a wider dialogue about the newspaper’s rights to publish uncensored stories.
The story at issue is about an intramural dodgeball team that uses initials as part of its name.
Some team members told a Mooring Mast reporter those initials could represent a vulgarity, and editors decided to print the vulgarity in both its print edition and on the website “to reflect the rebellious spirit of dodgeball,” Sorensen said.
University officials spotted the story online Friday morning and pulled it from the website, Brewis said. Administrators told Mooring Mast editors the story could be reposted if the profanities were removed, he said.
Newspaper staffers removed the profanities from the headline but not from the body of the story, instead posting an editors’ note telling readers the story contained strong language, editor in chief Heather Perry said. Perry said she was asked only to change the headline.
University officials decided that was not good enough and shut down the site “so a conversation could take place,” Brewis said.
Student editors contacted the Student Press Law Center, which advises student publications around the nation, and met with university officials, said Perry, a junior who also is the president of PLU’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Perry and Sorensen, the investigative editor at the paper, said they were concerned the university was abridging the newspaper’s First Amendment rights and being hypocritical in its enforcement of the obscenity rules.
PLU allowed a popular knitting group to use its name, which includes a profanity, in advertisements posted across campus, they said.
Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644
adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
Twitter: @TNTadam
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