WASHINGTON – Yale University has forced a student newspaper to delete an article from its website about President Bush's daughter.
The article appeared in a recent issue of the student tabloid Rumpus and said less-than-flattering things about how well Secret Service agents had protected Barbara Bush, who is a Yale student.
"On April 12, nearly a week after the issue had appeared in dining halls and newsstands around campus, (the dean of students) called Rumpus Editor-in-Chief Jared Leboff '03, Managing Editor Matt Johnson '03 and the article's author, Nathaniel Pincus-Roth '04, into her office," the Yale Daily News reported on Friday.
The move by Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg appears to conflict with Yale's free speech policy, which says in strongly-worded terms that "a free interchange of ideas is necessary.... The university must do everything possible to ensure within it the fullest degree of intellectual freedom."
This isn't the first time that Rumpus has raised eyebrows.
When it printed the names of students who belonged to some of Yale's secret societies last year, hundreds of copies mysteriously disappeared.
Quips a Yale grad student, who asked to be anonymous, in e-mail: "The Bush article seems to be in keeping with Rumpus' wonderful tradition, and the Administration's lax support for free speech."
Amiblackornot.com: Speaking of overly sensitive campuses, it now looks like the University of Pittsburgh won't try to punish a student for publishing amiblackornot.com.
The site is a parody of amihotornot.com and is operated by Pitt freshman Matt Schiros. Administrators claimed it to be racist and sent campus police to hand-deliver a letter telling him to pull the plug.
But after the local ACLU chapter got involved and said it would represent Schiros, the school backed down.
No compromise: A pair of liberal groups are asking President Bush to keep up the antitrust fight against Microsoft.
"If your administration does not pursue this case until Microsoft is clearly foreclosed from abusing monopoly power ... every other monopolist will be emboldened to ignore the law, placing consumers and businesses at risk in every industry," the National Consumers League and the American Antitrust Institute said in a statement sent to reporters on Friday.
They complimented the president on his proposed budget increase for the Justice Department's antitrust division and asked him not to settle the ongoing lawsuit, which was filed by the Clinton administration.
The National Consumers League recently demanded that the U.S. government ban chocolate Easter candy that includes a plastic egg, saying that children may try to eat it and choke.
In brief: The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by two convicted spies challenging wiretaps and search warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, The Washington Post reports. Lower courts have ruled that the feds can tap phones under FISA and not reveal the evidence.... The Ontario government is pledging more privacy regulations directed at the private sector. No word in Lt. Gov. Hilary Weston's speech about restricting government invasions of privacy.... The FTC has fined three sites for allegedly running afoul of a children's privacy law. Liberal groups like the measure, but libertarians say it will lead to more age-verification processes that could give a boost to anti-porn groups' battle to require erotic sites to check ages or shut down.
