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Silencing of Hampton Script Seems Like Payback

By Alexander R. LeMaine
Black College Wire

The administration seized the press run of the Hampton Script a year ago. The issue was republished after the paper agreed to run a letter from the acting president on the front page. It did so, with a disclaimer. (click photo to enlarge)

During my short tenure as a copy editor for the Hampton Script, it has been hard to not be repulsed by the quagmire that our paper has become.

The administration did not allow us to publish our first issue because we did not have an editorial adviser.

The entire staff was frustrated by that predicament. We were in a limbo because we couldn�t print, but we still did the necessary work. Even though we now have advisers, we lost a whole issue.

As late as the weekend before the Oct. 4 announcement of the new advisers, we didn�t know whether we were ever going to print. Sometimes I had to ask myself, "what's the point?"

I don't think the fact that we missed our first release date is happenstance. I believe this is somehow a plot to restrict the Script, and that this whole predicament is another vehicle to inhibit our First Amendment rights.

The situation seems extremely suspicious. The issue of lacking an adviser -- the reason the administration gave for not allowing the Script to be published -- should have come up much sooner, especially since it prevented us from printing the paper.

At the beginning of the semester, it seemed that there was a lack of organization in putting out our first issue.

It seemed as though no system was in place, as if the paper did not exist before this year. Evidently, this was an ominous sign.

The fact that much of the staff was not made aware of the adviser situation until a Friday evening staff get-together a couple of weeks before causes me to raise my eyebrow.

Wouldn't the lack of an adviser be a foreseeable problem? Couldn�t the ragtag search have been adverted?

I was under the impression that we would come out Sept. 29 with no problem. That is, until editor Talia Buford informed us of the situation.

This is why there has to be something more to this fiasco. Having a newspaper published seems just not to be among the school's priorities. The Script has become the illegitimate child that no one wants to claim.

I see this as possible retribution for last year's altercations, after the Script was confiscated and the dispute garnered national attention.

I'm not sure why Dean Tony Brown wants the School of Journalism and Communications to be separate from the Script, but I suspect that he doesn't want the school to be affiliated with something that gave the administration a black eye last year.

I was taken aback when I read "Richard Prince�s Journal-isms," in which Earl Caldwell, the Scripps Howard endowed professional, put the onus on the staff for the predicament. Speaking of the Script and its staff, he said that being the adviser "is a very huge, demanding role, and it's made tougher when the feeling is they feel the person is not going to be a positive asset." It might be that Caldwell received the reaction he did because no one wants to clash with the administration, like last year.

We are more than relieved to have our new advisers, Doug Smith, Christina Pinkston-Betts and Kia DuPree. Too bad professor Smith is just a �stopgap,� as he put it, since he doesn�t plan to be around during the spring semester. It wouldn�t surprise me if there were another scramble to find his replacement after the semester comes to a close. I sense no aversion among my fellow staff members to having an adviser. We are all here to work hard, learn and put out a good product. It's all in the spirit of good journalism. We do not get paid or compensated as at other schools.

I envy a paper like The Hilltop at Howard University. According to the Princeton Review, students voted it the best college newspaper. The Script can have the same success; we have the talent and the drive -- but unfortunately, we are not supported.

We have already lost good people over this perpetual struggle. I was fond of our former School of Journalism director, Dr. Christopher Campbell, and was very upset to see him leave.

I have grown tired of watching this drama unfold. I speak solely for myself, but I�m sure that I do not stand alone in my sentiments.

Alexander R. LeMaine is a print journalism major at Hampton University who is a copy editor on The Hampton Script.

Posted Oct. 4, 2004, updated Oct. 5, 2004