A student journalist at Western Oregon University was reprimanded, and the newspaper adviser was fired, after publishing an article showing the institution had not secured sensitive, private information about some applicants. Those actions, in 2007, last week produced a letter of censure from College Media Advisers, the group representing people who advise student-run media.
The censure involves a lot of letter writing. The university president got an official letter from the CMA president. That organization also notifies its members, asking them to write “letters of concern” to administrators, board members, and other “individuals of influence at the censured institution,” according to the group’s bylaws.
The censure was provoked, the CMA said in a written statement, by the university’s heavy-handed response to the newspaper article. As reported in The Chronicle in 2007, a student, Blair W. Loving, wrote an article explaining that he had accidentally stumbled on a computer file with 100 names of applicants to the university’s College of Education, along with their Social Security numbers.
Mark Weiss, Western Oregon’s vice president for finance and administration, told The Chronicle that while the university was grateful to learn of this vulnerability, Mr. Loving had violated computer-use policies because he accessed the file while logged onto the network under another student’s ID and then made a copy of the file. The student paper’s adviser, Susan Wickstrom, an administrator, held a copy of the file for a period of time, also violating the computer-use policy.
Ms. Wickstrom was dismissed — she did not seek reinstatement — the paper’s office was searched without informing the students or the adviser, and the university generally seemed to blame the newspaper for revealing a serious problem, the CMA said. Those actions create an atmosphere of hostility toward the press, and prompted the letter of censure. —Josh Fischman
