The Collegiate Times played a critical role in covering the horrific shooting that stunned Virginia Tech's usually calm campus in Blacksburg, Va., on April 16, 2007. While other media outlets scrambled to get reporters and other staff to the school in southwestern Virginia, the student newspaper covered key early parts of the story as it unfolded.
A few years later, Virginia Tech's leading media voice could have its budget slashed, the Roanoke Times reports. But the Collegiate Times plans to fight back. If the Virginia Tech Commission on Student Affairs proceeds with the budget cuts, the student newspaper's general manager says the Collegiate Times will pursue legal action.
The Commission on Student Affairs told the Collegiate Times on Monday that some online comments on the newspaper's website violated the "principles of the community," the report says. Officials have asked the Collegiate Times not to allow anonymous comments on the website. The paper has resisted, saying most college newspapers allow comments in any form.
The commission's budget-cutting proposal would also ban any student organization on campus from buying ads in the Times and shrink the budgets of other campus media outlets like the yearbook.
The move is "completely unconstitutional, as well as breach of contract," Collegiate Times General Manager Kelly Wolff told the Roanoke Times on Thursday. Wolff said that the newspaper will wait to hear more from the commission before taking legal action.
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Linda Moore of MA 3:11PM February 16, 2010