A crowd at IU’s Homecoming parade called for the Hoosiers to “suppress the Spartans” in its Saturday game against Michigan.
But on the parade’s sidelines, a faction of IU and Bloomington community members were calling for a stop to the suppression of IU’s student paper, the Indiana Daily Student.
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IU made national headlines last week after it fired the director of student media, Jim Rodenbush. And the university cancelled publication of the paper’s Homecoming-themed print edition, along with all future print editions.
IU Administrators told Rodenbush that Friday’s planned homecoming issue “should contain nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”
Rodenbush relayed this to the IDS editors. In meetings with IU and Media School administrators, he said students control content of the paper, and he wouldn’t “exercise prior review or censorship.”
He told WFIU that he was called into a meeting October 14 at 4:30 with an HR representative and Media School Dean David Tolchinsky. During that meeting he was fired.
Jack Forrest, the IDS managing editor thanked protesters on Friday evening for supporting the paper. He added IDS editors-in-chief were in meetings “advocating on steps forward for the IDS.”
Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, a leader at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington, helped organize the protest. She gets the IDS newsletter in her inbox.
“I feel like the IDS is a really important source of journalism for the Bloomington community,” she said. “It's hard to get local news in a lot of communities anymore.”
She urged people who are concerned about the university’s actions to contact the IU Board of Trustees.
“They are trying to silence the IDS from printing news in the printed editions,” Frederick-Gray said.
Frederick-Gray chanted with her fellow protesters “free press, free press, we support the I-D-S” while student and alumni groups filed by on Seventh Street.
Lexi Naperalski, an IU freshman, was in the Homecoming parade, and noticed the protestors when she passed by.
“I didn't know that would be going on, but I'm glad people are like speaking out about it,” she said. “I think it's good to have free speech and be able to express your opinions on campus in a peaceful protest.”
