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Radford University, a taxpayer-supported institution in southwestern Virginia, is in a public relations hole entirely of its own making. The question is how deep its administrators will insist on digging.

In September, roughly 1,000 copies of the Tartan, Radfords student-run newspaper, disappeared from campus news racks after having been delivered hours earlier. The next day, administrators summoned the papers editor, junior Dylan Lepore, to a meeting at which they criticized as insensitive a photo published on the papers front page. However, they appeared surprised to hear most of the issues had been stolen from 22 news racks around campus.

It turns out, after what campus police called an in-depth investigation, that a low-level university employee neither administrator nor professor was caught on video and admitted stealing papers from four of the news racks, as The Posts Joe Heim reported. The administration and police wont reveal the thiefs identity, although they know it; they wont charge the employee because they say taking free newspapers is not a crime; and they wont offer an explanation of who swiped the papers from 18 other news racks. Nor will they offer a motive or explanation for the theft.

The universitys strategy, if you can call it that, is tailor-made to prolong the colleges embarrassment, calling into question its leaderships judgment.

The photo in question upset a few administrators and faculty members, including Radfords president, Brian Hemphill, but apparently no one else; Lepore, the editor, told us he received no criticism from fellow students or on social media. The photo depicts Steve Tibbetts, a newly hired criminal-justice professor who died suddenly at age 49 a few weeks after arriving on campus, and it was given to the Tartan for publication by Tibbetts widow. In it, Tibbetts and his daughter are standing beneath a road sign that reads Tibbetts St. and, next to it, Dead End.

Radford said the thief has been disciplined and that the matter, along with incriminating police video, is a closed personnel issue. The thief was not acting on anyones direction, a university spokesman said.

That strains credulity. It is also hard to believe the employee acted alone; when the newspaper is delivered to campus each week, it takes two hours to distribute it, by golf cart, to all the news racks. Nor, as campus police suggest, does the fact that the Tartan is distributed for free mean that no crime was committed. The paper, whose publication costs include a $750 printing bill, Lepores salary and other expenses, is an object of value, whether it is sold or given away.

The question of whether publishing a photo was tasteful is a topic of legitimate debate. Stealing two-thirds of a student newspapers press run is an act of theft and an affront to the First Amendment. By its stonewalling, the university suggests that it takes neither matter very seriously.

-The Panama City News Herald

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Censorship by theft on a university campus | Editorial - Citizentribune