That’s right! The Collegiate Times is the student-led campus newspaper for Virginia Tech, but it’s not owned by the students, it’s owned and operated by Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech Inc., a totally independent entity. The Commission on Student Affairs (at VTech) notified the college newspaper Monday that it had been “deemed in violation of the university’s principles of community” for allowing “anonymous online comments” to be posted to the paper’s Web site.

In a letter posted on Feb. 8, officials laid out a plan to “cut university funding to the paper, the yearbook and other publications owned by EMCVT” and ban student organizations from using university funds to buy advertising in the paper, a move that is not only incredibly stupid, but could effectively shut down the paper. So now the paper is considering legal action. What’s the moral of the story here?

College papers should take note, make sure your “Owners” aren’t out to wreck havoc on your paper, if you dare to allow anonymous comments on your Newspaper’s site, which seems to be a popular trait on oh, 50% of the sites & blogs in the country!? Maybe the Commission of Student Affairs at Virginia Tech could benefit from a crash course on the sophisticated “Internets” in the meantime?. Read more about it here…