NEW YORK — The staff of a community collegestudent newspaper will be allowed back into its offices Feb. 21,following an eight-day shutdown that resulted from the paper’spublication of a controversial advertisement.
The staff of The Hudsonianwas locked out of its officeafter the Hudson Valley Community College student senate objectedto an advertisement for a strip club that the paper publishedin its Feb. 2 edition. The senate wanted the newspaper to agreenot to publish another ad for the strip club, even though theestablishment’s owner had paid the newspaper $500 to run the adtwice.
An agreement was reached between the student senate and theowner of the strip club, without the newspaper’s involvement.The owner, a former Hudson Valley student, accepted the senate’srequest that he not publish the second advertisement in the nextedition of The Hudsonian, and the student senate paid him$250 — the cost of the ad.
The full-page advertisement was a help-wanted ad for femaledancers. It featured a color photo of a woman in a bikini, andit promised a $100 bonus after the first month of employment,said Hudsonian editor Tony Gray.
After the publication of the ad, the newspaper’s adviser resigned,saying in his resignation letter that he did not want to be associatedwith a publication that would print an ad for a strip club.
Declaring that a student club could not exist without an adviser,the student senate locked the doors to The Hudsonian office,effectively shutting the staff members out and forcing them tocease publication of the newspaper
The administration has "vociferously objected to editorialsand news coverage for the last semester and are trying to usethis for justifying shutting down the paper," Gray said sevendays after the ad ran in the Feb. 2 edition.
After eight days, the student senate and the staff of TheHudsonianreached a compromise, which will allow the staffmembers to return to their office at around 3:00 p.m. on Feb.21.
"We still have issues to work out with the school regardingthe proper relations and degree of oversight and/or cooperationallowed by law," Gray said. "We will reopen, get backto putting papers out the door and meeting our commitments toour readers and advertisers."