CONWAY — The Echo, the University of Central Arkansas’ award-winning student newspaper, has been taking on the school’s administration on its news and editorial pages. A freepress advocacy group has, in turn, commended the university for resisting the temptation tocontrol the paper’s content.
In an editorial titled “Rough sidewalks match administration’s tactics,” the newspaper recently questioned the administration’s honesty and criticized President Allen C. Meadors for his “apparent sarcastic tone.”
The editorial cited a Jan. 23 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article about decorative stamped-concrete sidewalks that Meadors ordered for installation at UCA. The sidewalks have drawn some criticism, in part because they are more expensive than traditional walkways and because UCA has undergone major budget cuts.
In the Democrat-Gazette article, Meadors said, “If your only purpose in life is to do the cheapest thing you can do instead of something that looks and adds value to the product ... to the quality of life. ... why do you think the board of trustees have built brick buildings for thelast 50 years?”
That statement prompted Aprille Hanson of Mountain Home, opinion editor of The Echo, to write, “There are multiple things wrong with this statement, besides the sarcastic tone that a university president should be mature enough not to have with the press.”
In response, Meadors told the Democrat-Gazette that he apologizes “to anyone who feels I am anything but polite and factual.”
“I never meant to be sarcastic,” said Meadors, who took office July 1. “If I say hello to you and you think that is sarcastic, I have no way of getting into your mind and saying, ‘Why is hello sarcastic to you?’ I can’t tell you why you think something is sarcastic.”
Meadors, previously chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, said he has never before been the subject of such harsh editorials.
“For me, it’s a first,” he said. But he has seen tough student editorials involving others “hundreds of times.”
“I’ve been in this business 30 years, and one year ... that’s the kind of editorials students write, and the next year, they’re more civil.”
The Echo’s editorial also took Meadors’ administration to task for deleting a sentence from an online document in which an architectural firm had advised, “Stamped concrete should be avoided” for secondary sidewalks.
The Echo had interviewed physical plant Director Larry Lawrence by e-mail for an article about the decorative sidewalks. When the reporter went back to the online document about a week and a half later “to make sure he had the correct wording, he discovered [the sentence] was gone,” said the paper’s editor, Miranda Grubbs of Bentonville.
In its Feb. 10 edition, the paper reported the deletion in a front-page news article. Inside, the paper published scanned images showing the relevant portion of the document before and after the newspaper interview.
On its editorial page, The Echo called the deletion a “blatant attempt by the administration to try and cover up the recommendations against stamped concrete.”
The deleted sentence was “confusing people,” Meadors said in an interview with the Democrat-Gazette, and was just part of a consultant’s “recommendations that were never implemented.”
“When [Lawrence] told me he didn’t even know it was there, I said ... ‘If that’s in there, we should take it out,’” Meadors said.
The administration has not pressured the student paper to tone down its news coverage or editorials, Hanson and Grubbs said, nor has the paper’s adviser, David Keith.
“Surprisingly, I haven’t heard anything from the administration,” Hanson said. “It’s good. Obviously, we don’t want an administration that’s going to limit our [coverage].”
Frank LoMonte, an attorney and executive director of the Virginia-based Student Press Law Center, said, “It’s admirable for the school to maintain a hands-off policy and to be able to take a shot from the student media.
“Students are consumers, and they need a place to vent if they are displeased,” LoMonte added.
The Echo functions independently of UCA’s administration. Revenue from advertising and a student-publication fee fund the paper, said Keith, a journalism faculty member.
Keith serves “strictly in an advisory role,” he said.
“They [students] ask me questions, and I will answer them or provide guidance,” Keith said. “I do not even read any of the copy before it goes in unless there is something they specifically ask me to read.”
The Echo has taken tough editorial stances before. In January, the paper made it clear that students shouldn’t have to subsidize the athletic department through a higher athletic fee.
“Areas in the athletic department should be cut before a fee is raised,” the paper wrote.
That same editorial also took a shot at some amenities installed in Meadors’ UCAowned home: “Having the audacity to give [some athletic department] employees raises when the rest of the university is struggling is almost as absurd as installing $6,700 worth of wall-mounted television sets in the president’s house - it’s a slap in the face.”
Students “have gone through the [Lu] Hardin administration” and the contention that surrounded his resignation in August 2008, said opinion editor Hanson.
“I don’t believe that we need to ... keep building on that mistrust,” she said. “The administration needs to understand that that’s not acceptable.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/01/2010