NORTHCAROLINA — It is not every day that one sees men in thongunderwear, and that is exactly what student editors at North Carolina StateUniversity were thinking when they created theirrecruitment flyer.
But aprovost did not share the students’ vision, or at least he did not wantthe flyer with the exposed buttocks in a photo of campus streakers in anorientation packet for incoming students.
Editors for the Technician, the student newspaper atNCSU, said they were notified Wednesday that a recruitment flyer for studentmedia would be pulled from packets created for an incoming student orientationheld Thursday and Friday.
Provost Larry Nielsen could not be reachedfor comment, but hetoldthe Technician that he did not feel theflyers were appropriate for orientation. The flyers contain a picture of aTechnician reporter being hugged by agroup of ”shamrock streakers” on St. Patrick’s Day, said TylerDukes, Technician editor inchief.
”[The picture] shows [the reporter] in the middle ofthis group of guys and she’s laughing, but of course you can see theirrear ends which had shamrocks painted on them,” Dukes said.
Dukes said he met with Nielsen and other administrators Thursday todiscuss the situation. After an hour long meeting, both sides agreed that theflyers could be included in the packets for future orientations this summer witha sticker over the picture in question that would read, ”Why is thissticker here? Visit theTechnicianonline.com for the wholestory,” Dukes said.
The flyers were distributed in packets atanother orientation session for incoming freshmen that startedyesterday.
”By referring people to our Web site we were able toreach our short term goal of [recruiting students] without caving to theadministration,” Dukes said.
Dukes said he originally wantedthe sticker to say ”censored.” But he said Nielsen did not like thatidea because he felt he was not censoring the paper. However, administrators didagree to pay for the cost of the stickers as well as reimbursing the paper forthe flyers that were pulled from last week’s orientation. Dukes said thatshould cost administrators around $650.
”We’re going toupdate our Web site and update the story and we’re also going to keep thestory on our homepage as a feature story so anyone who gets a censored copy ofthe flyer can visit our homepage all summer,” Dukes said, adding that thepaper’s staff would be handing out uncensored copies of the flyer at theirinformational table during orientation as well.
Dukes said he did notanticipate he would have any other problems with administrators and said thewhole situation was ”a learning experience.”
”Ithink it kind of improved the relationship [between the newspaper and theadministration] because the administration got to sit around with these studentmedia leaders and see how they think,” Dukes said.