Ivory Towers: Crises, Controvery and Copy

Bureaucracy. Censorship. Discrimination. When these three buzzwords came together at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst this semester, they resulted in a roar of discord and confusion -- and a lawsuit against an individual and an institution. Three foreign students who were editors and writers at the university's independent student newspaper The Daily Collegian have filed a lawsuit against both the paper and Editor-in-Chief Dan Wetzel, accusing the paper of discrimination. According to Wetzel, the three students were not fired from the paper, but were told that they could not hold editorial positions because they are graduate students rather than undergraduates. The students had worked on the Third World Affairs page of the paper, a section devoted to the discussion and coverage of Third World events, until September 10, of this year, when they contend that they were dismissed because they are foreigners. "There is nothing inherently discriminatory in the Collegian," Wetzel said. "We think this paper should be run by 19-year-olds rather than 35-year-olds." Wetzel said that the graduate students were told that they could be on the staff of the Collegian, and that the actual suit is "speculation." "They're not going to have much of a case, because they've never been fired," Wetzel said. However, in response to the suit, Wetzel and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Tom Robinson issued a statement on September 21, in an attempt to smooth over the tensions which had arisen on all sides by dealing in terms of the university's bureaucracy. The statement said the Collegian's constitution was the document "most germane to the questions raised by the three graduate students." In an attempt to answer the graduate-undergraduate question, the statement said that although the university's Student Activities Office has a working policy "severely limiting the role of graduate students in undergraduate student organizations," that policy has been "inconsistently applied." The Collegian's relationship to the university easily lends itself to bureaucratic entanglement. While, according to Wetzel, the paper is a financially independent foundation, it is a "registered student organization." "We have to obey Student Activities Office rules, or else we would no longer be a registered student organization," Wetzel said. According to the statement, the provisions of the constitution permit graduate students to be staff members of the Collegian and to vote in elections. The constitution also specifies that "in the event that there are no undergraduate applicants for a department manager, editor or associate position, a graduate student may hold such a leadership position" -- which is a point of contention in the lawsuit. The statement said, "the question of the appropriate role of graduate students in undergraduate student organizations needs futher review," and that the issue was one that should be dealt with to prevent "future misunderstandings and inconsistency." However, the writers claim that they were discriminated against not as graduate students, but rather, as foreigners, and their lawsuit brings the formidable specters of bigotry and censorship to the bureaucratic melee. Graduate student and Indian national Madamohan Rao said that throughout his tenure as Third World Affairs editor, he was faced with "intimidation and harassment," and claims that the suit is "a clear-cut case of discrimination." "We feel that this is just an attempt to get rid of our opinions," Rao said. "It's an act of discrimination and censorship, and it's outrageous that it's happening to foreign students who have come here on an educational exchange." Rabi Dutta, a fellow foreign graduate student and former writer for Third World Affairs, said that the Collegian had fired the three on the basis of "some bureaucratic excuse," and echoed Rao's claims of discrimination. "This is totally at odds with all the things written in the constitution," Dutta said. Dutta added that prior to the establishment of the Third World Affairs page three years ago, students had complained of the paper's "biased coverage." The accusations of minority intolerance cast a giant shadow over the Collegian, in light of the fact that last year, student protesters overran the Collegian's independent offices, and accused the paper of racist writing and policies. According to the plaintiff's lawyer, Cristobal Bonifaz, the clients are demanding reinstatement to their editorial and writing positions and unspecified damages. Bonifaz said that the university has already sided with his clients and put out a press release saying that the three students would be reinstated to their positions, and that "the Collegian backed off from this agreement one day later." According to Wetzel, however, the university's press release simply dealt with the question of whether or not the students could work at the paper, and stated that the students are welcome to work on the staff without holding editorial positions. Wetzel said that all charges of discrimination brought against him and the paper were false and without foundation. The university's Director of the News Office, Karin Sherdin, said that the university itself has not been named a party to the lawsuit because Bonifaz said that "he felt the university had negotiated in good faith with his clients." Sherdin said that the university had been under the impression that a settlement had been reached in the case. "Before the suit was filed, the university administration had been talking with the Collegian editor and with the graduate students and their attorney, trying to work out a settlement," Sherdin said. "We thought we had accomplished that." "Somewhere between what we thought had been accomplished and what actually came to pass . . . the graduate students were dissatisfied," Sherdin said. Bonifaz said that a judge will probably begin hearing preliminary arguments at the beginning of next month. The lawsuit raises many questions -- questions of freedom of student expression in relation to a university's bureaucratic system of governing and in relation to a multicultural community -- which do not seem to have any immediate answers for college journalists in the 1990s. This complicated cacophony up in Amherst, however, has not made itself heard in Philadelphia. The University's General Counsel Shelley Green said that no discrimination suit of this kind has ever occurred, to her knowledge, at the University. "We've had nothing comparable," Green said. "Certainly no one has sued us saying that they had a right to be an editor at The Daily Pennsylvanian."

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