SATURDAY, MARCH 28 – 9:00 a.m.

Click, beep, beep, beep, beep! Slap! [Wait 7 minutes] Click, beep, beep, beep, beep! Slap! [Continue this process until 10:00 a.m.]

Go to bathroom, look in mirror and ponder how hair and face can be so destroyed by pillow, get dressed in loose-fitting comfortable clothing, and leave Southwest dorm room.

Walk across chilly campus, consciously walking in a cool way, avoid deep water or mud and abandon cool walk to move across slippery ice by method of grandmother waddle.

Reach back door of Campus Center, give obligatory acknowledgment to people I kind of know, walk up steps, grab the most recent issue of THE GUSTAVIAN WEEK … NO WEEKLY!!!

This is the tragic story of how I came to realize that someone made a decision to censor campus news in order to present prospective students and their families with a squeaky clean but incomplete image of Gustavus. We don’t know for certain who removed the WEEKLYs, but some people suspect it was someone connected to the Gustavus Adolphus College Admissions Office. Whoever decided to enact this censorship should be ashamed. The situation left me feeling like Zen-golfer Ty Webb in the film Caddyshack who said, “This isn’t Russia. Is this Russia? This isn’t Russia.”

THE WEEKLY’s front page story that week was about Case Day and how different groups felt about this annual Gustavus beer-drinking tradition. I have heard some people express disgust in this being a front page story, but I would challenge them to think of a more talked about piece of news on campus that week. I have personally never participated in the event, but everywhere I turned I was talking about it with students, coaches, faculty and staff. Like it or not, Case Day is a phenomenon in Gustavus culture, and any prospective student who chooses Gustavus will be confronted by it in the future. Censorship of campus media only leaves those high school students less informed as to the community they could possibly be joining.

As a private college, Gustavus has a legal right to censor anything it wants to on campus. However, I believe this censorship gives a bad image to current students who feel that Gustavus is no longer the educational center of open discussion they once believed it was.

Whoever removed the issues may have been concerned about the current increase in students transferring away from Gustavus, but tightening control on student expression is not the way to attract new students and retain current ones.

College censorship does not only occur at Gustavus, which is probably why I got 2,490,000 results when I Googled it. Some New Mexico students were even suspended for protesting censorship of their school newspaper, so make sure to interrogate the Office of Admissions if I disappear from campus.

A private Catholic college in suburban Chicago also recently censored its school newspaper because the paper attempted to report on an alleged federal lawsuit against a university trustee. Will even bigger issues be censored in the future by the college’s administration? How can students know they will be informed about the big stories on campus? Gustavus is a wonderful school with a variety of experiences to offer students, and it should not limit its greatness by clamping down on student expression.

This brings me to my theory about the two faces of Gustavus. There is the face that students see on campus every day, and then there is the face when the college is holding alumni or prospective student events. I believe the everyday face of Gustavus is beautiful, though it isn’t perfect, and yet its imperfections can sometimes add to its character and beauty.

Removing campus newspapers, offering better food selection in the Market Place, only showing people the shiny new buildings and offering lavish banquets are examples of how these visitors to the college are not receiving the full Gustavus experience. Why can’t people accept Gustavus for what it is? Warts and all! Prospective students are looking for an active and engaged community, not a Disney utopia.

America is still a country where liberty and freedom are at the core of societal values. Should these not also be at the core of Gustavus’ values? How can we claim to value justice when we censor honest student expression?

John Stuart Mill put it best when he said, “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.” My hope is that one day the only face of Gustavus present will be an honest one, because after all, “this isn’t Russia.”