Stealing a “free” newspaper is . . . THEFT

Below is my letter to the Campus Carrier, which I plan to submit this week. I wrote in response to, unfortunately, a Berry student who does not (yet) appreciate the role of free expression (oooh — there’s that word again — free!) in a democratic society nor the insidious threat of “little brother” censorship, and that profoundly saddens me. It really does. Something in the student’s education, including long before coming to Berry, went terribly wrong. The student’s letter has sat in the pit of my stomach like an ulcer for four days. I also have a postscript at the end I will not be submitting.

In light of some published opinions that censoring the readers of the Carrier by stealing 900 copies could not possibly be a crime, I offer only a few reasons why taking a “free” newspaper is actually theft and, therefore, a violation of the Viking Code by even the most liberal of readings:

First, “free” does not mean the Carrier does not cost anything. Student worker pay to writers, editors, designers and photographers; the cost of the paper and its printing; the advertising dollars spent by area businesses wasted on a publication not distributed to potential patrons all adds up to quite a bit of value. Like nearly every other newspaper everywhere, the cost of the Carrier is subsidized by advertisers and Berry, to the point that readers do not have to pay a cent. Someone else, therefore, is picking up the tab, but there most certainly is a tab to pick up. (By the way, the Carrier has always notified readers on its opinion pages that the paper “is available on the Berry College campus, one free per person.”)

Second, and I would argue more importantly, the Carrier is a vessel of intellectual property, which is Berry’s most valuable asset as an institution of higher education. Stealing 900 copies and, therefore, preventing potentially 900 other individuals from exposure to the ideas, information and opinions in that Carrier is censorship and the theft of intellectual property — that of those who wrote and contributed to the paper and from those who could no longer read those contributions. Ironically, last week these ideas and opinions included that of one letter writer who believed such censorship is “great,” to use the writer’s mind-bending description. There could be fewer more effective means of censorship than removing the publication from distribution and circulation.

Finally, and I reluctantly pull out the American flag for this last reason, censorship by stealing a campus’s only newspaper, its only paper of record, and a primary means of debate and discussion, is simply and unequivocally un-American. Doesn’t the writer realize that to prevent the dissemination of news, information and opinion with which someone disagrees contradicts the very notion of a self-governing democratic society?

There are other more economic reasons, but I will finish by quoting California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was speaking upon ratifying his state’s law specifically criminalizing the theft of free newspapers: “We must work to ensure that no one is able to deprive others of their First Amendment rights.” The Governator is right, because letting thieves get away with censorship threatens the very idea of a free press and the reason we are all here in the Bubble to begin with.

Postscript: It saddens me further that the Berry community has so quietly absorbed the threat to our intellectual vitality and academic and political freedoms, seemingly and dysfunctionally sweeping it under the Berry Bubbleland carpet. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the endorsement of First Amendment expression? Where’s even an apology from a cheerleader or cheerleader advisor for censorship on our campus? And what of the disciplinary investigation?