UPDATE: 8:40 p.m. ET:
The Mooring Mast website is back up and running. Editors have agreed to change profanity in their story about the dodgeball team, but say they will investigate what happened today.
UPDATE: 7:40 p.m. ET:
Editors say they’ve reached an agreement to put the Mast website back online. The staff has agreed to replace the expletives with symbols in exchange for the homepage being restored.
However, the staff will continue to fight an order from administrators that the newspaper is not to use profanity.
UPDATE 5:40 p.m. ET:
The Mast is reporting that an email sent to the newspaper’s editor and faculty adviser this morning claimed the dodgeball headline violated AP style on profanity and obscenity.
There also appears to be some ambiguity about the name of the dodgeball team. The official name is FSU, but several team members said they understood the name to mean “Fuck Shit Up.”
Editors are currently meeting with school officials to resolve the dispute.
UPDATE 5:20 p.m. ET:
Officials at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Wash., pulled down the homepage of the Mooring Mast student newspaper Friday. The controversy stems from a story published earlier in the day headlined “Fuck Shit Up drops the ball,” about a dodgeball team of the same name.
About 9:10 a.m. PT, a university staff member pulled the teaser and link to the story. Student editors modified the headline about 10:30 a.m. to use symbols in place of the expletives. After the newspaper began Tweeting that the story remains available, the newspaper’s homepage was taken offline.
The newspaper reported that a university official claimed the headline violated Associated Press style.
The site’s main page is hosted on the university server, while the rest of the content is apparently hosted through a Blogger account.
This post will be updated.