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One hopes that students who undertake to edit and publish a newspaper will assume a measure of responsibility commensurate with the freedom granted them. And, with an occasional exception, college editors want nothing so much as to be regarded as reliable and responsible.

Freedom provides a stimulus to responsibility. For once a student knows he will get either credit or blame for the job he does as editor, he begins to be concerned about his own reputation. He seeks advice before he acts, where otherwise he would wait for a higher authority to correct his errors. He begins to learn the essential lesson that freedom never really is earned until the individual proves that he can exercise it responsibly.

In this way, the college press stimulates not just the critical faculty in the student, but also helps develop that more sophisticated faculty--the responsible exercise of freedom--which can be cultivated in no other way. The notion that responsibility can be injected intravenously and that, enough of it having been administered, freedom can subsequently be substituted in the syringe, is itself irresponsible and destructive. It is a favorite refuge of authoritarians.

Thus, the case for freedom of the college press, which is strong and persuasive, too often is put in its weakest terms. It has nothing to do with the protections the Constitution affords the press. What is at stake is protecting these very constitutional freedoms, which are based on a society whose members are free to examine and criticize all institutions. These freedoms will survive only so long as we make it a stated policy of our educational system to stimulate the critical faculty, not suppress it because it sometimes may cause embarrassment.

This is what our college newspapers can do, have done, and should be encouraged to continue doing