But in fact, there is no place that more urgently needs a vigorous press encouraging lively debate and myriad viewpoints than a college campus, which is supposed to challenge young people to question their preconceived notions and strive for the truth.

Beyond the benefits of student media as a forum for public debate, the collegiate press also has solemn responsibilities: to expose corruption, to reveal hypocrisy to shine a light of truth on dark corners of the university.

The sacred mission of the press is simply to inform. But when thorough, aggressive reporting paints an unflattering portrait of a college or its administrators, censorship at public universities inevitably arises. The so-called educators believe that the search for truth—the central goal of any university—is not so important when the truth-seekers are student reporters covering the administration.

Few colleges, if any, would question the importance of freedom of the press in American society. Even GSU President Stuart I. Fagan said, “I have—and will always be—a proponent of the free press.”

But what kind of message does it send to promote the free press in America while censoring student newspapers on campus? If the teachers at GSU wanted to teach a valuable lesson to their students, they would allow The Innovator the freedoms afforded to it under the first amendment.

It’s not surprising, really, that the GSU administrators wished to silence the voice of The Innovator. Those in a position of power have forever sought to silence those journalists whose mission and responsibility it is to hold them accountable and describe the world as it really is.

In 1923, The Harvard Crimson reported on the presence of the Klu Klux Klan at Harvard, drawing national attention and embarrassment to the University. The pressure to end the negative coverage was considerable. Harvard’s Alumni Bulletin “counselled the omission of these lurid tales.”

But the editors of The Crimson refused to only report the news that the administration and alumni saw fit to print. They committed themselves to one simple goal: informing their readers of the truth.

“To serve largely as a mere chronicle of events,” they wrote in 1923, is “an aim which is very estimable in itself but totally different from that which The Crimson believes to be the true end of university journalism.”

The Crimson today is fortunate to be an incorporated newspaper, independent from and not beholden to the University. Thankfully, we are free from censorship.

But for far too many college newspapers around the country, censorship—or the threat of it—is a daily reality.

If the courts take seriously the solemn vow in the first amendment that “Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech, or of the press,” then they should guarantee that college journalists like Margaret Hosty and Jeni Porche at The Innovator are afforded the same constitutional protections as every other American—student or not.

Amit R. Paley ’04 is a social studies and East Asian studies concentrator in Lowell House. He is president of The Harvard Crimson.