MichaelMoore.com

Group of CSU students rallies around embattled editor

By John Ensslin / Rocky Mountain News

FORT COLLINS - A few days after Colorado State University Republicans gathered signatures protesting an editorial in The Rocky Mountain Collegian, another group of students collected signatures Wednesday supporting Collegian editor J. David McSwane.

Kris Hite, a biochemistry major who organized the pro-McSwane petition drive, said in one day the group had gathered 734 signatures.

Hite said McSwane came over at one point, thanked the group and signed the petition. "He said thank you several times," he said.

Several students collecting the signatures also took part in a rally outside the CSU Plant Science building, where the Board of Student Communications met tonight to discuss the controversy.

Derek Moran arrived early for the meeting, but in the end, wound up waiting in line to get back in.

A Fort Collins saddle maker, Moran went to the meeting along with a friend who is a CSU student.

"Free speech is something I'm all about," Moran said. "I don't think he said it the right way, but we need to uphold our freedom of speech regardless of what's said."

Moran said there were about 31 people signed up to speak for three minutes each, 19 for editor J. David McSwane and the paper and 12 against.

But just as the meeting was getting underway, Moran started coughing and stepped outside for a moment, only to be told he couldn't go back in.

Forty-five minutes later he was still on the outside, along with dozens of other people who either waiting in line or lounged on the front lawn.

"I'm riding with my buddy," Moran explained. "He's still in there."

Trina Clemente, a CSU anthropology student, standing in the "free speech" zone before the meeting complained about the controversy.

"I don't think that the meeting is justified," she said while putting the finishing touches on a sign that read, "Who's afraid of the Big Bad F."

"I just think it's infantile," she said. "For me, the root thing is that there are things happening in the world that are profane and that are not being covered, or are being covered but don't generate controversy. This is a fake controversy."

Clemente's husband, Luca, a biochemistry major, said he could see both sides of the argument over the editorial, but he said the issue was freedom of expression.

"I wouldn't have written an essay like that," he said. "But I don't think that's the issue. The issue is the right of The Collegian editorial board to express any opinion they deem to express."

Letters to the editor

Normally, The Collegian runs a handful of letters to the editor.

On Wednesday (or as Nick Hemenway, one of the paper's conservative columnists, dubbed it, "F- day plus five"), the paper ran a full page of letters, all on the topic of the controversial editor.

Nineteen of the 34 letters and e-mails, which came from as far away at Brooklyn, N.Y., and Seattle, excoriated the paper for bad taste, disrespect and the use of profanity. Some of the letters dished the profanity right back.

"You kids have shown yourself to be morons. Yes, kids and morons ? because educated adults don't have to stoop to crude, vulgar language in order to express themselves," wrote Phil Nolden, of Sanibel, Fla.

Others defended the paper.

"Too many of our civil liberties are being threatened these days," wrote Aaron Orlowski. "Too many people are being threatened and suppressed from openly exercising their rights and freedoms as citizens."

On the front counter of the newspaper office in the Lory Student Center were copies of a letter from McSwane stating he had no intention of resigning, but declining further comment on the controversy.

McSwane, however, did post a message on the Collegian Web site, denying a television news report that he would be suing CSU.

He acknowledged, though, that he will be meeting with Denver lawyer David Lane.

Privately, some staffers expressed concern over what impact the loss of revenue from businesses that have pulled their ads in protest would mean for the paper's continued operation.

The paper's editorial cartoonist, J. Lingerer, drew an ambivalent self-portrait, showing himself hunched over the drawing board with scraps of paper at his feet.

"I find myself torn," he wrote. "On one hand we have a guy who has a job to uphold, with employees depending on his leadership to keep their journalism opportunity doors open. He has seriously jeopardized advertising income and the reputation of The Collegian in exchange for the expression of one idea.

"On the other hand, we have a guy who is taking advantage of an opportunity to push limits. Journalism is not awarded for being the 'most ordinary.'"