The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate is questioning campus distribution of the Boston Herald due to the paper's inclusion of graphic photographs of a student killed at the riots following the Red Sox' ALCS playoff win.
Already dissatisfied with the quality of the Boston Herald, senators cited the photos in a meeting last week on possible alternative publications to be distributed on campus.
"We on TCU Senate don't think the quality of the Boston Herald is in keeping with the quality of our education at Tufts," Senator Jonathan Adler said.
The Herald article featured pictures of Emerson student Victoria Snelgrove who died from a head wound after police officers shot non-lethal crowd control guns at her during post-game riots.
At Northeastern University, the student government announced that it would remove the Herald from the campus newsstands shortly after the incident.
The Herald could not be reached for comment, but released a statement in the Boston Globe after publishing the photographs.
"Our aim was to demonstrate this terrible tragedy as comprehensively as possible," Herald Editorial Director Kenneth Chandler said in the statement. "In retrospect, the images of this unusually ugly incident were too graphic."
The Herald included a front-page picture of Snelgrove shortly after the accident and a more graphic photo of the student's battered face on page 4.
Senators were especially concerned with the Herald's prominent distribution centers on campus. "Why does a free paper get that much publicity? Could we get a more prominent paper?" Adler asked.
The New York Times, which is already distributed at certain campus locations, was a popular alternative for mass distribution. "I hope we get a larger more definite distribution of the Times where students can always count on having it there," Adler said.
Students have mixed reactions to the Senate's deliberations on scrapping the Herald. While some support the idea, others call the removal censorship or reflective of partisan bias.
Some students suggested that the removal of the Herald, which endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election, would be due more to its conservative than to the offensive content.
"Students were shocked that a newspaper could disagree with the campus consensus in the editorial pages," Editor-in-Chief of the Primary Source Brandon Balkind said.
"I am sure the students who dislike the Herald would have liked to remove it from Tufts before the election, but the timing didn't work out, and it would be even more obvious what their motives were," Balkind said.
Balkind said having a variety of news sources on campus was valuable - and that the Senate should not regulate campus media. "In reality, it would be removing a free newspaper which everyone, including liberals, enjoy reading," Balkind said. "We shouldn't be limited to the Times because some people think it's better."
The Senate disputes these claims. "That is completely not the goal of the TCU Senate," Adler said. "We have no partisanship to a political party," he said.
Other students pointed out the advantages of having the Herald on campus, citing short and readable articles.
Adler dismissed the notion that the Senate intended to censor campus media. "I don't think that this has to do with censorship," Adler said. "It has to do with the quality of the newspapers."
Adler said students would have plenty of other means of acquiring news without the Herald. "Anything is on the Internet," he said.
