A power struggle of sorts is rapidly unfolding down the B-Line. Boston College officials have decided to impose a number of new regulations on BC’s independent newspaper, The Heights, if it wants to stay in an office it rents from the university on campus. Allegedly concerned with appropriateness of some of the paper’s content, BC administrators have told The Heights that they must stop running advertisements for tobacco, alcohol and birth control, cut advertising rates for on-campus providers by 50 percent and create a new board of directors that would include several faculty advisers.

While BC administrators may feel that these stipulations are appropriate to maintaining the university’s strong moral foundation, they are in fact usurping editorial control from a newspaper that has been independent since 1971. Their requirements not only undermine The Heights editorial board’s ability to make decisions, but they also impose unfair regulations that will damage the paper ideologically, editorially and financially. Their approach is a form of censorship disguised as a stipulation on a lease agreement. While they may believe they are approaching The Heights with the school’s best interests in mind, they are actually imposing unfair and absurd regulations that allow them to control the newspaper as they see fit.

A faculty board would theoretically be a big help to student staffers and editors, but forcing The Heights to accept a panel of faculty members seems as if BC is trying to impose editorial babysitters on the paper. The Heights, too, as an independent paper, already has a code of ethics and guidelines and an able governing board. While it would be valuable for faculty members to voice suggestions and constructive criticism, it would be imposing to have them effectively become the paper’s executive board or advisory committee. The stipulations BC proposes would immediately take away the independent status that The Heights has known for decades. Administrators are basically sidestepping censorship and 1st Amendment implications and tacking their demands deceptively onto a housing agreement.

Just because they may be legal, however, doesn’t mean they’re right. An independent newspaper is an essential element to the college experience — a necessity for students as they formulate the ideologies that will guide them in future endeavors, and BC is threatening that integrity.

The stipulations also have serious financial implications as well. Not only would BC be more in control of what appears in the supposedly independent paper, it would also be robbing it of 13 percent of its semester advertising revenue with the demand for cut in campus-specific ad rates. Either the administrators were unaware of The Heights’ financial situation before the controversy, or they are choosing to simply ignore it. Regardless, using the school’s leverage over the student organization for financial gain is juvenile and wrong.

The Heights, until now, appears to have had a cooperative relationship with Boston College, yet has remained independent and has not had to answer to administrative officials about editorial content the same relationship that The Daily Free Press has with Boston University. Although independent and under no direct obligation to do so, the editors of The Heights agreed to cease running abortion advertisements in 1978 per request of BC’s administrators. Why have university officials not mounted the same approach now? Instead of discussing the type of advertisements they feel comfortable seeing in The Heights and voicing their concerns, administrators have approached the matter in an unproductive, usurping manner. They make bold declarations on concerns that could have been discussed and compromised upon had they not approached the matter with such inexplicable aggression.

We urge the editors and staff of The Heights to stand strong against this ridiculous and unproductive attempt at editorial control by Boston College administrators. In the face of these stipulations from the college, the editors of The Heights have stood tall. We can only hope that BC officials will realize the ideological, editorial and financial impacts of their stipulations, and retract them in order to restore the now-fragile relationship with one of their most important campus institutions.