This is a story that began several months ago but which may receive a new installment in a few weeks. It involves the Columbia University Spectator, the undergraduate newspaper on Morningside Heights in New York City--and it involves freedom of the collegiate press, too.

The Spectator this summer took, or was forced to take, a major step towards losing its independence. Here are the facts:

Spec's constitution provides in properly legal language that the paper's Managing Board shall appoint its successors toward the end of its term in office. Spec's most recent board had difficulty in agreeing on a new editor-in-chief last spring so it asked Columbia College's Emergency Council, wartime student governing body, to mediate the dispute.

Glad to assist, the Emergency Council picked Edward Gold; the choice was accepted by the Spec staff, which then drew up a slate of Managing Board editors to serve under Gold and presented the list, as a matter of form, to the Council for its approval.

Quite unexpectedly, the Council rejected the proposed Board, insinuating that political intrigue had played a part in the rapid elevation of Byron Dobell, second-in-command-on the new Board. Spec editors, resenting the Council's implication and interference, countered that the elevation was made on grounds of "ability, initiative, service, originality, and sincerity."

The chairman of the Council, Jack Bainton, then asserted that the Spec board had not demonstrated its capability to select its successors. This was on June 8; a four-to-three majority decided the Council's policy.

McKnight and KCAC Enter Ring

The Spec Board is now out, because the issue of choosing a new Managing board for Spec was submitted by the Council to the King's Crown Advisory Committee, which runs Columbia's extra-curricular activities, on June 11 and the KCAC took selection of the new board out of the hands of the old board. From now on the KCAC, in which Associate Dean Nicholas McD, McKnight and other faculty members have a dominant voice, would call the tune.

In a "Protest issue" June 13, the Spectator attacked the Emergency Council's and the King's Crown Advisory Committee's, infringement of its independence: "An intolerable situation has arisen. A willful attempt by Emergency Council is being made to grasp the reins of Spectator editorial policy so tightly that Spectator will never again be the master of its own fate.... The entire Spectator staff, Managing Board, and Associate News Board, bitterly protest this action. No one, neither the Council nor a committee of King's Crown Advisory Board has a right to approve of Spectator's editorial policy in advance. If this is allowed to occur, it will be the first step to domination of all other extra-curricular activities on Campus."

The leaders of Columbia's other extra-curricular groups backed the protest. The Jester, undergraduate humor magazine, published a front page editorial, but the Emergency Council denied distribution of the issue until a mimeographed sheet had been stapled to its cover.

Jester Muzzled

Entitled "Let Freedom Ring" and signed by the Emergency Council, the stapled muzzle proclaimed in patronizing tone that the "function of Jester "is to be a humorous magazine, in the New Yorker Style, but the editor has chosen this issue as his personal medium for an adulterated discussion of a matter which has already been settled.

"Emergency Council regrets that the new students are not getting a true example of the Jester Magazine. The issue might have been donated to the scrap drive, but we prefer to use it as an illustration of the genuine freedom of the press that exists on the Columbia College Campus."

On its third page, Jester had run another editorial disparaging "Your New Emergency Council" as a student governing body unrepresentative of the students: "Easiest-method of joining the Emergency Council is to browbeat ten students to sign a petition for one of those quiet elections which slip by every term or so. Since competition is rarely keen, this eliminating process often leads to what is known loosely as election."

Early in August, after three more issues of Spec had been put out by an interim board, the still-adamant staff announced that it would discontinue publication until fall, when it would receive reinforcements (returning editors) in its fight against the Council. But the Council wasn't sitting still; it named a five-man panel, including two V-12ers, to edit Jester.