Oracle Online

Somehow, the rhetOracle story headlined “Linda ‘Buzzsaw’ Hanson not your average university president” was put on a listserv, which sent automatic e-mails to lists of Navy SEALs and POWs. Soon after, Getty began receiving calls from infuriated SEALs who knew little or nothing about Hamline or the Oracle. To help curb the comments that were coming in, our website was taken offline without our knowledge or permission.

We published the rhetOracle on our website without the indication that this issue was the rhetOracle. This was our error. However, when this was brought to our attention by Getty, we remedied the situation by placing disclaimers on each article for clarification at the recommendation of Hamline School of Law Dean and media law expert John Garon.

Oracle editors Matt Lutz and Melissa Nieting met with Getty, Associate Vice President of Marketing and Communications Jen Thorson, Dean of Students Alan Sickbert and CLA Dean Garvin Davenport later on Wednesday. Ideas were presented by the administrators to retract the article, put it behind a simple password (such as oracle or piper) or make it viewable only from a Hamline IP address. In light of our views of censorship, we rejected these limiting options. Thorson, who was the editor of the Oracle in 1996, even had the audacity of recommending not publishing the rhetOracle in print in the future.

The website subsequently remained down until Thursday afternoon, after the university got the go-ahead from their legal council.

This was a passive-aggressive push for censorship to help the university with public relations. The university may be angry with the phone calls and the work hours taken to field them, but that does not justify broad censorship. The university pandered to an special interest group. Hamline clearly had a public relations problem, but their reaction was unwarranted and out of line.

It is also a violation of the Student Handbook. On page 101 under the heading “Student Press,” the handbook reads, “In brief [the press] is a press governed by and for the students. It is free from censorship or advance approval of copy by the university or any part of it.” [italics outs] This violation is appalling, being that these are governing policies of the university. We view the handbook as a contract which needs to be followed. By censoring the Oracle, this contract was broken.

This conduct must not be allowed to take place. The policy says that the student press, which the Oracle Online is an extension of, is not to be censored. Such an encroachment is dangerous and unacceptable. The students and their press deserve better.