Officials at a local Catholic university announced in late February that they have decided to cut scholarship funding to leaders of some student organizations, including the campus newspaper. The move follows a series of disputes with some of those groups last year.
The Catholic University of America cut nearly $80,000 in scholarship money that had been distributed to student groups including the yearbook and the student newspaper, The Tower, which has had a contentious relationship with the university in the past.
Administrators at CUA have previously said that the cuts, which student editors said may endanger the future of the yearbook and the newspaper, were unrelated to tensions between the university and The Tower.
University administrators refused to have any further dealings with The Tower after the newspaper ran a number of articles last year that editors said the administration found objectionable, including a report on the university’s decision to cancel an appearance by actor Stanley Tucci because of his abortion rights stance.
The university also announced that it would cut scholarship funding to editors at the school yearbook and to student government representatives, who had received thousands of dollars each year as compensation for their time commitments, which they said range from 25 to 40 hours a week.
CUA spokesman Victor Nakas declined to comment on the situation onday and referred inquiries to earlier comments he made to The Chronicle of Higher Education in late February.
“We do not need these scholarships to meet the university’s enrollment goals,” Nakas said in that article. “The system we have here is antiquated, and there’s no evidence that this change is going to be fatal to any of the affected organizations.”
CUA administrators also said in that article that the scholarship cuts were the result of a decision to reallocate student aid funding within the university and did not reflect any hostility toward The Tower.
Peter Bowman, the editor of the CUA yearbook, however, said that after the cuts he “does not expect the yearbook to exist next year.”
Phil Essington, editor in chief of The Tower, said he believes that the scholarship cuts will make it much more difficult to sustain the paper financially and to retain and recruit staff. With the new cuts, none of the 10 editors will receive compensation for their work on the paper, he said.
Essington also said that the scholarship cuts will “decrease free speech and students’ creative expression on campus.” He cited the university’s opposition to The Tower’s coverage of several issues, including administrators’ refusal to allow a NAACP chapter on campus, as the real motivation for the financial cutbacks.
The Tower also ran an article last November about Catholic University President David M. O’Connell’s decision to give the benediction at an event for President Bush after he announced that no political speakers would be allowed on campus until after the presidential election in November.
Student government President Sara McGrath said that she was also concerned that participation in her organization would decline. Although she has been in contact with administrators in order to discuss other possibilities for scholarship funding, she said she was told that it was “up to the students to be creative” in their attempts to acquire funding.
Communications between the The Tower and the university administration have been worsening since October, when Nakas and some top CUA officials refused to comment to the newspaper on any further articles.
Nakas wrote in an e-mail to the paper’s editors that month that “given what I have read in The Tower over the past few issues, I have decided to have no more dealings with you or other members of The Tower staff,” according to The Chronicle’s article.
