No One Won in Hampton Newspaper Crisis

Pearl Stewart

The agreement reached last week between Hampton University's student newspaper staff and Acting President JoAnn Haysbert was not a victory, but, as editor Talia Buford told The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Va., simply progress.

The task force that will be appointed will focus immediate attention on a situation that has long needed to change. The Script is currently under the control of the administration, and its content has to be approved before the paper is published. Far too many historically black institutions have these rigid restrictions on student media. Perhaps this incident will lead to changes on those campuses as well.

No one won at Hampton, not Haysbert, who revealed a shocking lack of understanding about the role of student media, and certainly not the student editors, who should not have been forced to place Haysbert's letter on the front page. That action came close to turning the school newspaper into a public relations handout and was an insult not only to the newspaper staff but to the readers, who expect to see news presented in the paper in the appropriate manner. When was the last time anyone saw a letter on the front page of any reputable newspaper? The acting president required the students to do something that diminished the quality and credibility of the paper. The editors' disclaimer that accompanied the letter was an excellent idea, but it should not have been necessary, because the letter should not have been there.

For several days last week, Hampton's newspaper editors resisted Haysbert's order that her letter of response about the cafeteria violations be published on the front page. Haysbert had the 6,500 copies of the paper removed from The Script office last Wednesday after she learned that her letter was on page three. If the students hadn't agreed to redesign the front page, Hampton would not have had a homecoming issue.

By insisting that the students place her letter on the front page instead of inside, where it belonged, Haysbert made it clear that she is neither knowledgeable nor concerned about proper journalism, and that she is interested only in having her wishes carried out. That is a questionable attitude for the chief executive of a university that houses an accredited journalism school.

The students wrote an accurate story about health code violations in the cafeteria, and in it they focused on the university's hasty response to the citations. The story was not only fair, it was charitable to the administration. The conditions in the cafeteria, which is located in the basement of a 130-year-old building, were deplorable.

In the thirteenth paragraph of the story, The Script reported: "Students complained about seeing dead flies in the dinner plates and roaches crawling across salad bars and from under plates. One student witnessed a roach trapped in the plastic wrap covering a cup of pudding." In many papers, that paragraph would have been the lead.

The acting president's actions had the boomerang effect of publicizing to an international audience the school's disgusting bug infestation. Had she allowed the original issue of the paper to be distributed, the cafeteria's code violations would not be a topic of conversation -- along with the censorship issues -- all over the Internet. Although the building has been sanitized, many are wondering how it was allowed to reach the point of having 30 violations.

The students were clearly trying to report the story without embarrassing the university on homecoming weekend. However, the gravity of the health issues warranted a hard-hitting news story and an even harder-hitting editorial.

The administrators who condoned the confiscation of the papers should enroll in some of the classes being taught by their outstanding journalism faculty. They should learn how intrepid journalists have exposed human rights violations from lynchings in the South to the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia.

Journalism is a noble profession, and Hampton's administrators should encourage the campus newspaper to report the truth and to stand up for what is right.

Pearl Stewart is chair of the Black College Communication Association and founder of the Black College Wire.

Posted Oct. 27, 2003