Press freedom evolves at The Gamecock
The First Amendment is among the most treasured sentences in United States history. The abstract rights that it promises, however, mean nothing until they are put into practice. At The Gamecock, the “freedom of speech, or of the press” has alternately been restricted, carefully defined and pushed to its limits.
Numerous times in the student newspaper’s history, editors have butted heads with administrators and readers over restrictions of the printed word. Since as early as 1941, conflicts have arisen over the paper’s content.
Then-Editor in Chief J.M. McKinney pushed the envelope with a series of inflammatory editorials before resigning less than a month into his term.
In response to a widely circulated petition urging Congress to declare war on Germany, McKinney wrote in a September 26 editorial, “Certain professors are subscribing to a petition designed to kill students they now teach how to live… It is grimly humorous that well-informed persons indulge in the pickanniny [sic] game of quarrel-picking. It is significant that most of our professors are above draft age.”
By 1940s standards, he was no doubt seen as a hell-raiser. Later, in an October 8 editorial, McKinney’s words reflected a browbeaten cynicism.
“No, freshman,” he wrote. “The Gamecock prints only parts of the campus truth. No newspaper can tell the whole truth and live.” He then proceeded to rail against lawyers, advertisers and the “discipline committee” as limiters of the newspaper’s expression.
Two issues later, a news story announced that McKinney had stepped down from his position—but not without a flurry of dramatic rhetoric about how “the will of the faculty committee on publications” ran counter to his idea of freedom of the press.
In the 1960s, as the civil rights movement shaped the decade’s public conversation, columnists were not gun-shy on matters of racial equality.
“The race problem is not dead,” one columnist wrote. “It is alive and kicking in South Carolina… Could it be because of a community which has refused to give more than lip service to a long-integrated campus—which has, in truth, scorned its Negro students at almost every turn?”
The Gamecock’s editorial permissiveness shifted to keep in step with that era’s newly emerging sentiments.
One 1968 issue included a straight-faced story about a USC freshman’s alleged occult supernatural experiences involving an Ouija board.
“Two of her main contacts have been Castoro, her father from the third century, and Hipatseh, a Sioux Indian,” wrote the staff writer.
The paper once ran a photo of the campus smokestack with a caption noting that its giant block letters may not actually spell out “LSD,” “but that’s the way it looks when you read the smoke stack from this angle.”
The Gamecock’s ideals did not shift without opposition, however. One incident in 1968 aroused the ire of both administrators and students.
Writer Michael Ball was assigned to write a feature on the nightly rounds of a Columbia area police officer. Expecting a dull night and a cut-and-dry story, Ball settled into the passenger seat of a cruiser with his notepad and pen.
Later that night, according to Ball, they pulled up next to a rowdy group of drunken male students. A verbal conflict arose, and one student let loose a four-letter expletive suggestive of sexual intercourse. The officer responded in kind while removing his gun from its holster, Ball said.
Ball recorded the exchange—verbatim—in his article.
When the story got to the presses, a manager at the printing company phoned then-University President Thomas Jones to alert him of the impending obscenity. As Ball tells the story, Jones called Carl Stepp, the paper’s editor at the time, who made the decision to run Ball’s story with the offending verb masked by dashes.
Ball’s article was accompanied on the first page by a statement from Jones wherein the president explained, “The Gamecock is a University organ and not a press whose very existence depends on public acceptance.”
Ball says the article ran on September 24, 1969, but that day’s edition is not in the university’s microfilm archives. Its absence is marked by the words “ISSUE MISSING.” The only available copy was found in Ball’s files.
“On the East Coat and the West Coast, there was a free speech movement going on, but it didn’t get to South Carolina,” said Ball in a phone interview. Now a technical writer and active blogger in the Boston area, he said he does not see the incident as an instance of true censorship; rather, he feels that the editor simply kowtowed to pressure.
“Nobody said he couldn’t run it,” he said.
At the time, though, Stepp was not of the same opinion.
“The Gamecock feels Jones’ threats and the pressure brought by other administrators is plain censorship,” he wrote in an editorial adjacent to Jones’s statement.
On April 28, 1971, The Gamecock again tested the limits of press freedom when it devoted three full pages to printing a letter from an underground revolutionary. Outspoken activist Brett Bursey, who had been convicted of vandalizing Columbia’s Selective Service office, penned an epistle full of revolutionary ethos and defiance against governmental authority.
The letter, entitled “A Pig By Any Other Name,” addressed a broad spectrum of topics. From criticisms of the American court system to casual mentions of upcoming “individual terrorism” to the details of Bursey’s betrayal by an undercover agent, the fugitive radical had no shortage of commentary to offer.
Editor Charles Beebe appended a brief note explaining the purpose of printing Bursey’s note.
“Whether or not you espouse the revolutionary cause, it is a factor in the political destiny of this country and even on this campus,” Beebe wrote. He also mentioned that it cast an interesting light on the May 1970 Russell House takeover, when a group of students—originally assembled to mourn the then-recent Kent State tragedy—took over the student union in protest of what they deemed illegal police searches and seizures.
The Board of Student Publications and Communications followed Bursey’s document 19 days later with a front-page open letter urging The Gamecock’s editorial staff to make changes “with the thought of bringing their procedures more closely in line with current practices in the field of student journalism.” For some time, there was talk of the Board of Trustees shutting the paper down, and the opinion page was repeatedly filled with impassioned letters and columns on the topic.
Tensions cooled over the summer, and The Gamecock resumed publication as usual in the fall semester, but few would soon forget the clash of ideologies that took place.
Conflict would arise again in 2001 with regard to The Gamecock’s coverage of Student Government elections. On February 21, an editorial ran featuring the paper’s endorsements of candidates Angela Wilson and Nathan White for, respectively, the positions of student body president and vice president.
Many Student Government members were outraged, crying foul at the paper’s apparent entry into partisan politics. Some students, who were never identified, stole over 750 copies of the paper and threw them in the trash. Other newspapers—including those at public universities—had long condoned the practice of endorsements, but the topic still sparked debate.
“You have to keep in mind who pays the bills,” said Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Jerry Brewer, referring to the mandatory student activity fees that helped cover The Gamecock’s operational expenses.
At the peak of enmity between the newspaper staff and the governing Board of Student Publications and Communications, Vergakis ran a satirical column in which he apologized “for not warning the university community that I had no intention of letting The Gamecock be intimidated this year.” One staff editorial, in which Vergakis reportedly took no part, was simply titled, “Board of Publications should be abolished.”
Vergakis, now an Associated Press writer based in Salt Lake City, was not available for comment.
Brewer, who wrote for The Gamecock in the mid-‘70s, said that the real issue at hand in 2001 was the endorsements’ authorship. They were presented in standard editorial form, representing a joint opinion formulated by the staff as a whole. The endorsements were selected at “ The Gamecock’s debate on Monday night,” according to the opening sentence.
“It was not an issue of corporate opinion; it was [Vergakis’s] opinion,” claimed Brewer.
This year, The Daily Gamecock endorsed candidates for the Republican and Democratic primaries. The so-called “Gamecaucuses” factored in the opinions of every section editor and represented the overall opinion of the staff.
The newspaper, now on far more amicable terms with the Board, also plans to host debates for the upcoming Student Government elections. After careful deliberation, the editorial board will publish their picks for the various offices.
Since its conception, USC’s flagship student-run newspaper has worked to define the extent and application of First Amendment rights. From drug references to civil rights issues, from button-pushing remarks to legitimate challenges, its writers and editors have striven to preserve and advance the American system of press coverage.
“I think they have more guts,” said Ball of today’s college editors. While this may or may not be true, The Daily Gamecock’s current leaders owe a debt of gratitude to their predecessors who set the precedents on which they now build.