DAILY EMERALD DEFENDS DECISION TO USE EXPLETIVE.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Those naughty kids.

Actually, they're all adults, the six members of the Oregon Daily Emerald's editorial board. And they're fine with the decision they made to run this big, bold, all-capital-letter headline Tuesday in the campus newspaper run by University of Oregon students: "F--- Censorship."

The headline ran in a size normally reserved for big-news front-page items such as, well, declarations of war, terrorist attacks and the death of Elvis, above an opinion piece defending the First Amendment right of Colorado State University's student newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Collegian, to print profanity. The Emerald's headline has since generated feedback, especially on the paper's Web site, with a majority of it negative, but also comments in support.

The Collegian ran this on its opinion page Sept. 21: `Taser this ... ' It then used the same language as the Emerald headline, only referring to President Bush. No other words. No explanation.

The uproar over that editorial comment has attracted national media attention and resulted in a free speech debate at CSU, along with criticisms of bad taste and dis<302>respect toward President Bush.

The Collegian's comment was in response to the Sept. 17 use of a Taser on and arrest of a University of Florida journalism student, Andrew Meyer, by university police during a question-and-answer session with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. Meyer had asked Kerry why he didn't contest the 2004 presidential election and why there had been no moves by Congress to impeach President Bush. Video of Meyer's arrest ended up on YouTube. It shows Meyer ranting at a lectern, then being confronted by police officers who eventually wrestle him to the ground and used a Taser to control him.

The connection between what happened in Florida, Tasers and the Bush administration is a bit unclear, other then the Collegian simply making an indirect statement about some of the administration's policies over the years.

Laura Powers, the Emerald's editor, suspects that's the case.

"I don't think their statement was the most well-thought out response," she said Wednesday. Nonetheless, the Emerald's editorial board felt it needed to make a statement in defense of free speech and what it perceives as "censorship after the fact," she said.

The fate of the Collegian's editor, J. David McSwane, is expected to be decided by CSU's Board of Student Communications today. He could be fired, according to the Collegian and Denver area newspapers.

Powers said the Emerald's editorial board, which consists of herself and five other student editors at the paper, feels that the CSU board is looking at the incident as if McSwane broke some sort of university rule by using profanity.

"And that just boggles my mind," Powers said. "We felt it was time to weigh in on the Colorado State debacle."

But why such a large, eye-catching headline? "Because that's how big the page is," she said.

The editorial was actually supposed to run in the Emerald on Monday, but an error at Western Oregon Web Press in Albany, where the paper is printed, resulted in a page from Oregon State University's student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, to run instead on page 2 of Monday's edition of the Emerald, said Martin Leopard, the printing company's general manager.

This led some at the Emerald to believe that the company made the mistake on purpose because of the headline's comment, said Mark Watson, a UO librarian and chairman of the Emerald's board of directors.

Not the case, Leopard said. "It was just a really unfortunate coincidence on a really unfortunate editorial," he said.

The editorial begins by explaining the decision to use the profanity by saying it normally would not do so, but "desperate times call for desperate measures ... which makes this the perfect moment for a strong statement in support of free speech."

UO School of Journalism and Communication Dean Tim Gleason, who has served on the Emerald's board of directors before, said his initial reaction to the editorial was that "a pretty thoughtful editorial was going to be lost in the shock of the headline. My suspicion is that an awful lot of people never read the editorial." However, Gleason said he fully supports the Emerald's right to run such a headline. The great value of student newspapers is the learning process, he said. Students learn a lot from the consequences of running such a headline, Gleason said.

Whether there will be any consequences, other than the few angry phone calls the Emerald has received, along with many responses for and against posted on the paper's Web site, is anyone's guess.

Watson, the chairman of the Emerald's board of directors, has no influence over the newspaper's editorial content but does oversee the newspaper's editor and staff in an advisory role. He said he supports the decision to run the editorial and its headline. "I guess mistakes can be made, but I don't think this is one of them," he said.

The UO has no oversight over the Emerald.

Most comments Watson read on the Emerald's Web site "were kind of negative," he said. They called the editor "immature" or said the headline was "gratuitous," Watson said. "I didn't take the editorial that way at all."

As for whether the Emerald could lose advertising over the editorial, Watson said: "I would think those who advertise with us wouldn't be too offended."