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University officials say an incident earlier this month where staffers with The Chart, the student newspaper at Missouri Southern, were not allowed to display an issue of the newspaper at a campus event "resulted from errors in judgment and miscommunication."
Missouri Southern Vice President for Academic Affairs John Messick issued a written statement on the incident by e-mail on Friday.
MSSU President Bruce Speck said last week that Messick was investigating the incident and would have a statement sometime this week.
The incident happened on Oct. 8 when, according to The Chart, Derek Skaggs, director of enrollment services, told a representative of the university's communications department not to display the newspaper at a career fair on campus.
The newspaper reported that Skaggs cited a story on the front page of that issue describing a decrease in enrollment at MSSU this semester as the reason for not allowing it to be displayed.
The Chart quoted Skaggs as saying: "Well we're out here trying to recruit students and I don't think it was appropriate to have a newspaper that's talking about the decline in our enrollment."
Attorneys for the Student Press Law Center, which provides legal services for high school and college newspapers in First Amendment and open meetings related issues, and the Missouri Press Association, said they believed the incident was a violation of the students' First Amendment protections.
Following the Oct. 17 MSSU Board of Governor's meeting, Speck told The Press that the incident was the result of "a misunderstanding."
"The first thing we'd say is, I haven't been here very long, but my sense is there has been a pretty good relationship between the university and The Chart," Speck said. "So there's no inherent problem in that regard. I would say that suggests and it proves the case that The Chart has had a great deal of freedom.
"There hasn't been any suppression of news, so my sense of this is that this is something that is not policy, there is no policy to follow this. There were a series of circumstances that I think contributed to this from what I can tell, but there certainly is no policy change here in terms of our relationship and The Chart has all the freedoms it's always had."
Speck said the administration was not trying to curtail what The Chart reports and that Skaggs has been an advocate of The Chart in the past.
University officials say an incident earlier this month where staffers with The Chart, the student newspaper at Missouri Southern, were not allowed to display an issue of the newspaper at a campus event "resulted from errors in judgment and miscommunication."
Missouri Southern Vice President for Academic Affairs John Messick issued a written statement on the incident by e-mail on Friday.
MSSU President Bruce Speck said last week that Messick was investigating the incident and would have a statement sometime this week.
The incident happened on Oct. 8 when, according to The Chart, Derek Skaggs, director of enrollment services, told a representative of the university's communications department not to display the newspaper at a career fair on campus.
The newspaper reported that Skaggs cited a story on the front page of that issue describing a decrease in enrollment at MSSU this semester as the reason for not allowing it to be displayed.
The Chart quoted Skaggs as saying: "Well we're out here trying to recruit students and I don't think it was appropriate to have a newspaper that's talking about the decline in our enrollment."
Attorneys for the Student Press Law Center, which provides legal services for high school and college newspapers in First Amendment and open meetings related issues, and the Missouri Press Association, said they believed the incident was a violation of the students' First Amendment protections.
Following the Oct. 17 MSSU Board of Governor's meeting, Speck told The Press that the incident was the result of "a misunderstanding."
"The first thing we'd say is, I haven't been here very long, but my sense is there has been a pretty good relationship between the university and The Chart," Speck said. "So there's no inherent problem in that regard. I would say that suggests and it proves the case that The Chart has had a great deal of freedom.
"There hasn't been any suppression of news, so my sense of this is that this is something that is not policy, there is no policy to follow this. There were a series of circumstances that I think contributed to this from what I can tell, but there certainly is no policy change here in terms of our relationship and The Chart has all the freedoms it's always had."
Speck said the administration was not trying to curtail what The Chart reports and that Skaggs has been an advocate of The Chart in the past.
"I think we're not looking at anything that's a sea-change in terms of policy," Speck said. "If you look at the various circumstances, and John's gone through that, I think we had a series of miscommunications that were probably not handled as well as they could have been."
n the release on Friday, Messick said: "We found that the problem resulted from errors in judgment and miscommunication."
"We have discussed the need for better communication in the future between the parties involved," Messick said. "The administration's policy of being open and cooperative with The Chart has not changed.
"It was an unfortunate situation that we have addressed and we expect the communication to improve. We don't expect this to happen again."
