Albright College seizes copies of student newspaper

In a lesson for student journalists about the fragility of the free press, Albright College officials cited spurious copyright concerns in seizing 1,000 copies of the campus newspaper to suppress an inconvenient front-page article. They were later returned. (12/12/00)

from - http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/121100n8.htm

ALBRIGHT COLLEGE SEIZES COPIES OF STUDENT NEWSPAPER School Officials Say They Worried About Copyright Violations

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by Mark Fitzgerald

Call it Rashoman In Reading: Depending on who's talking, Albright College officials either pulled a fire drill at the student center for the first time in two decades so they could sneak into the offices of the Albrightian to seize copies of the student paper to keep visiting parents of prospective students from seeing embarrassing Page One news - or concerned school officials at the Pennsylvania college acted responsibly to investigate apparent glaring copyright violations.

Oh, and the fire drill? It didn't happen like that at all.

"That fire drill thing is an unbelievably erroneous rumor," said Barbara Marshall, director of college relations for the Reading, Pa., school. But Marshall confirmed that administrators did seize 1,000 copies of the paper. She said it appeared that the biweekly had reprinted articles from the Reading Eagle. As the paper's publisher, she said, the college was concerned about copyright liability.

"There was absolutely no intention to censor. They were always going to get the papers back," she said.

Censorship is the only word for what happened, countered the paper's editor in chief, Matt Kemeny. He said the college seized the Nov. 10 issue because it didn't want 200 high-school kids and their parents, who were due the next day at an open house for prospective students, to see a front-page article about Albright's ranking in the latest "Barron's Profiles of American Colleges." He also said administrators should have known that for years the Reading Eagle has allowed the student paper to reprint articles.

The papers were returned after a rancorous meeting at the student center. "I feel they've definitely learned their lesson because of all the publicity about it," Kemeny said. "But I still feel it was definitely censorship."