In May, at the end of the spring semester, Norwich University’s student newspaper pledged to its readers that it would resume publishing after the summer break.
“The Guidon, your trusted student-run newspaper, will be back in action for the Fall 2024 semester, bringing you the latest news, features, and updates from our campus community,” reads a May 12 article from the paper’s staff.
But the newspaper has not published a single story since then. For the entirety of this semester, which began Aug. 26, the paper has been suspended by the university’s administration — a move that has raised concerns on campus over what some see as censorship.
It’s not entirely clear why Norwich, a 205-year-old military university in Northfield, decided to halt publication of the newspaper. The Guidon’s digital editor declined to comment, and an email sent to The Guidon’s general email address went unanswered.
Administrators have said that the decision was based on concerns that the newspaper’s student journalists were unprepared for the challenges and responsibilities of reporting.
But the move came after a spring semester in which The Guidon published multiple stories critical of the university. They included pieces about a lawsuit from a former Norwich administrator, a reported sexual assault on campus and what the paper described as “a lack of transparency” in the administration’s response to incidents of sexual assault.
Administrators had raised concerns about some of that reporting, according to Shane Graber, a professor of communications and The Guidon’s faculty advisor.
‘Evaluation and restructuring’
Norwich administrators declined VTDigger’s requests for an interview. In an emailed statement, Karen Gaines, Norwich University’s provost and dean of the faculty, characterized the suspension of the publication as a “pause” but said that the university is “very much committed to reinvigorating the publication as early as next semester.”
The goal of the suspension is to find out how best to prepare students for the work in the future, she said, noting that Norwich currently has no journalism major or minor.
“We know that media is under attack across the country and a cornerstone of our democracy is a free press,” Gaines wrote. “That requires us, as stewards of this publication, to be sure our students have what they need to succeed as student journalists and storytellers.”
Earlier this month, Gregory McGrath, Norwich’s associate vice president and dean of students, told the university’s student body president in an Oct. 1 email obtained by VTDigger that The Guidon was paused pending an “evaluation and restructuring.”
“The President and Provost are not satisfied with the degree of academic rigor in this educational program and are reevaluating how we will move forward,” McGrath wrote, referring to the student newspaper.
At a meeting of the faculty senate that same day, Gaines, the provost, told faculty members that the lack of training “resulted in some issues of concern raised about how we prepare students, our student journalists, for the responsibilities that they’ve taken on.”
Gaines also cited an unspecified personnel matter that she said she could not discuss.
‘A personnel issue’
The Guidon, which is pronounced “guide-on” and named after a military flag or flagbearer, had never been suspended before in its roughly century-long history, according to Graber, the faculty advisor. In the spring, The Guidon was all-digital and had no print edition.
But this year, Graber said, administrators had grown dissatisfied with his work with The Guidon — and concerned about some of its coverage.
The hard news pieces published in the past year or so were a departure from the newspaper’s generally softer coverage in the past, according to Graber and other faculty members.
Some of The Guidon’s articles, and the actions of its reporters, had drawn “concerns” from students, faculty, staff and administrators, according to a June letter sent to Graber from Ted Kohn, the dean of Norwich’s College of Arts and Sciences.
On Tuesday, Graber wrote a letter to the university’s Department of Global Humanities and to the faculty senate, saying that he had been asked to submit documents — “a newsroom handbook, code of ethics, student advisory board bylaws, and training materials” — to the department for approval in order for The Guidon to continue publishing. Administrators had linked his job performance at Norwich to those prerequisites, he wrote.
Screenshot from a recording of an October 1 meeting of the Norwich University faculty senate obtained by VTDigger..
In the past year or so, Graber and The Guidon’s reporters had been summoned for multiple meetings with administrators about the newspaper’s coverage, which had a “chilling effect” on its reporting, he wrote in the Oct. 8 letter.
The university was particularly concerned about the newspaper’s coverage of sexual assault on campus, Graber said in an interview.
“The point is, if they had a problem with my mentorship — I’m not conceding that at all — but if they did, then that’s a personnel issue,” Graber said. “You don’t censor a student news organization for that. If I was going into every Guidon newsroom meeting every week and trying to light the place on fire — you deal with me! You don’t punish the students.”
The suspension of the publication, and the requirement that the Department of Global Humanities sign off on editorial materials, appear to subject The Guidon to a level of oversight that other student papers in Vermont do not face.
VTDigger inquired about student news outlets at four other Vermont institutions of higher learning: the University of Vermont, Middlebury College, Vermont State University and Bennington College. All of those publications have no formal requirements or prerequisites for student reporters, and are published independently of their administrations, representatives for the papers or schools said.
“Freedom of the press is important, so the administration provides no oversight role,” Ashley Jowett, a spokesperson for Bennington College, said in an email replying to questions about the school’s student newspaper, The Bennington Lens. “The faculty sponsor serves to guide students when they have questions.”
‘This ought to be covered’
Over the past two weeks, The Guidon’s suspension has raised concerns among students and faculty at Norwich.
Rowly Brucken, a professor of history and the director of Norwich University’s history program, sent administrators an email Thursday urging them to lift the suspension on the newspaper “immediately.”
Brucken is a former specialist for Amnesty International USA and an advocate for press freedom in Zimbabwe. That experience has “given me a real hands-on appreciation for the power and sanctity of the free press,” Brucken said in an interview Thursday.
“I know people who have suffered for being reporters, and whose newspapers have been raided, newsrooms destroyed, newsrooms burned through arson, reporters arrested,” he said. “I mean, this is not abstract to me.”
Javier Montañez Lugo, Norwich’s student body president, said in an interview that he hoped the process of resuming publication of The Guidon could be faster and involve student input.
“My concern, and (the) student government concern, is more of that gap of information, where students have not been able to to know what’s going on at school,” said Montañez Lugo, a senior. “And the longer this process takes, the more damage we do.”
Without the newspaper, Norwich University was being deprived of critical information such as that provided by The Guidon’s reporting on topics like sexual assault and litigation this spring, said Carl Martin, a Norwich professor of English and the chair of the faculty senate.
“All of this is the real news of Norwich,” he said. “This ought to be covered. So I stand fully behind the students who’ve done this work.”
In the faculty senate hearing earlier this month, Martin questioned Gaines, the provost, over the newspaper’s suspension, saying that instituting administrative requirements for The Guidon’s editorial staff could subject it to inappropriate influence.
“We wouldn’t want to be in a position of inviting the concerns that we’re censoring the content of a student newspaper,” he said.
Gaines replied that the administration was not engaged in censorship. Instead, she said, the university was assessing concerns over the newspaper’s work and trying to chart a path forward.
The university was considering, “What is student journalism? What is a free press?” she said. “What are the guardrails that we want our students to learn?”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Why did Norwich University suspend its student newspaper?.