Abandoned Business Administration The Observer

Over the past weekend, we received a report from College of Business Dean Jeffrey Stinson and Associate Dean Keke “Coco” Wu actively attempting to throw our Shaw-Smyser papers into a recycling bin in response to our article. budget which reported the 2023 budget cuts. It is disheartening that our article was rejected in an attempt to cast the university in a positive light.

Stinson said out loud, walking with Wu, Crystal Clausen, the Observer’s social media editor, and her colleague, “I’m going to put these papers in the recycling.”

After being asked why the papers were thrown away, Wu told Clausen, “Why [The Observer] think it was smart to print that [budget] story the day we have so many students coming to campus? »

We contacted Wu and Stinson at the time of publication. Wu said she was involved in a meeting that passed our deadline, so she declined to comment at the time; Stinson responded in an email.

“While preparing our building for the CWU preview day on Saturday, I moved the remaining copies of The Observer from the lobby,” the email reads. “Preview Day is critical to our recruitment efforts. Our desire is to present our prospective students and guests with a positive image and perspective of the college and university. The set-up of our Event Day and the delivery of the event have been organized for this purpose.

The story in question regarding the 2023 budget was published a week ago. Vice President of Financial Affairs Joel Klucking provided information for this story and did not contact non-factual details for the article. The budget is important to both the current CWU community and future CWU students.

Observation staff also witnessed incidents in the SURC where our newspaper was placed on the lowest shelf and another publication, HYPE magazine, placed above ours.

The advertising center confirmed that it did not make this change. While we cannot confirm who did this in SURC, two separate incidents against our newspaper in one day are heartbreaking.

I spoke to the Student Press Law Center about this incident, and they confirmed that it hindered us in many ways. There is monetary value to what offenders have done. How much we paid to have these copies printed, how much money we pay our staff, how much different groups paid to have their advertisements appear in our newspaper, and so on.

I would like to take this moment to remind you that media censorship is a real problem that should not happen to any publication, let alone a student publication from the administration of their own university. The first amendment is to have freedom of speech and freedom of the press. There is no valid excuse for trying to censor our reporting.

Our goal is not to make people happy or to make the university, city or state amazing. We report the facts of our university community.

Contacting us by phone or email is the right form of action if you are upset, not throwing away our paper. You can also write a letter to the editor that will be published, and if necessary, we will have a response published with it.

Please be aware that this will not require us to modify our reports in any way. Our publication is there to present the necessary information to the public. We are here to stay.