“Reached close to press time a university spokesperson was unable to respond.”

Way back when the earth’s crust was cooling and I was editor of the student paper at the small college I attended in Pennsylvania, we regularly trashed the administration for one dumb policy after another. Never once, though, did any administrator attempt to shut us down or revoke the small tuition credit given to the editor. I guess I’ll have to reconsider my opinion of the college! (Or thank our battle-weary faculty advisor again.)

Exceedingly well put. Career PR people too often fail to understand the role of journalists in our society.

Mr. Braff,

Thanks for the clarification. It is a distinction well worth noting. If it’s only a scholarship Jason is receiving, then he should not be bound by the constraints of QU’s public affairs department, which seems like a coalition of the clueless.

My best guess is that none of the people who promulgated the policy or who have been charged with implementing it, have ever been journalists. I say this because anyone with any experience on that side of the fence would immediately recognize the self-defeating nature of such a policy.

I’m leery of hiring for PR positions candidates who lack a background in journalism; they seldom do well, in part because they can’t comprehend at an operational level how they ultimately help themselves (that is, the organization they represent) by helping the journalists they work with.

Specific to Quinnipiac’s policy, it is both wise and proper that anyone who speaks for the university, that is who in their professional role represents the university’s position on a particular issue, to receive counsel from the university’s PR department, so that they are articulating accurately the university’s position of the subject.

But while administrators and faculty may sometimes serve as representatives of the university, often they aren’t, even when the topic under discussion may be related to the university. (Consider faculty members speaking to the press during contract negotiations with the university. In this case a faculty member would be speaking as a member of the union. Clearly it would be inappropriate — perhaps even illegal — for the university’s PR department to interfere with that communication.)

As far as students go, it’s ridiculous for the PR department to think it has any right to muzzle them. Not to put too fine a point on it, but students are the university’s customers. (A student salary doesn’t come close to covering the cost of tuition and other university-related charges.) That status, in my mind, gives them the right to express their opinions about any aspect of the university they choose to.

There’s a subtext to this contretemps that ought to be noted, and that is the wisdom of having student newspapers at the college or university level. A paper that is chartered by the school and receives student activity funding is in a different position from an independent, student-run newspaper that covers the university. Admittedly, this is a rare situation because it’s difficult for most college newspapers to generate sufficient funding to publish. That said, most of the best college papers fit this profile. And not a surprise that many staff members from those papers wind up with good jobs in journalism.

So.

You go to college to learn stuff. Some lessons are part of a lesson plan, some aren’t. Some things are learned outside the classroom. Mr. Braff’s situation is indeed complicated by the fact he’s paid ( just 3 grand less than my salary as a first year reporter back in the 70s! ) But the issue is much larger than Braff’s part of it. Expecting students to clear what they want to say to a reporter with the college before he or she talks? Good Lord. That’s an awful lesson to teach. But students shouldn’t be surprised if they land post college jobs in places with the same egregious policy as the one in place at Quinnipiac. Who knows? They may end up working at a hospital.