In a Feb. 5 piece in The Daily Northwestern, the Students Publishing Co. board of directors claimed it was the victim of an “act of vandalism.”
Fake front pages had been wrapped around copies of The Daily Northwestern in October. Student Publishing, the parent company of the newspaper, complained that this action “interfered with the rights of student journalists to publish and distribute their work.”
Instead of interpreting the exploits of two Black students as a mischievous act, the board reported the incident to campus police. After an investigation, Northwestern police issued citations to two students, and the state’s attorney’s office subsequently filed charges of theft of advertising services — a rarely used statute that journalist Connor Echols of the investigative news nonprofit The Intercept noted was apparently crafted to impede the Ku Klux Klan’s ability to spread their messages by clandestinely inserting information in newspapers.
Under Illinois law, such a crime is a Class A misdemeanor in Illinois and carries with it the potential of a penalty of up to a year of imprisonment and a fine not to exceed $2,500. Now that the charges have been dropped, there is some cause for celebration. Questions remain, however, about the implications of how this all unfolded.
Certainly, staffers suffered disruption and inconvenience when they were compelled to mobilize and retrieve the covers in the hours following the discovery. The newspaper office received scores of outraged phone calls and emails, and the board was obliged to address the controversy in a front-page statement in the next day’s print edition.
But in her recollection of events in a late January letter to supporters, general manager Stacia G. Campbell did not report diminished circulation numbers, declines in donor support or any negative impact on the ability of students to report the news. Indeed, The Daily Northwestern seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance.
In the same letter, Campbell praised her staff for producing “some of the best and most impactful journalism in recent memory” and thanked backers for the support that enabled them to expand local news and cultural coverage and send staffers to NCCA sports tournaments and the Las Vegas Bowl. If there were concerns about any reputational impact on the paper, her celebration of the Daily’s award of the Student Press Law Center’s Courage in Student Journalism Award belied any concerns.
The board insisted that the insert was “fake” and therefore not covered under free speech provisions. And though the board disputes this, the authors of a widely distributed letter claim that the attached cover was intended as a parody — to raise awareness about what these students believed was the poor quality of the press coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in the weeks following Oct. 7 and the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza precipitated by Israeli military strikes, which they term “genocide.”
The top half of the cover displays a scene of doctors, apparently surrounded by corpses and two men cradling dead children, at a news conference. It’s an image emblematic of others from that region printed in major newspapers around the world. Below, the articles on the broadsheet read very much like political satire — the dining hall staff was refusing food and water to diners until 13 reusable food containers were returned; staff had shut off electricity in dorms until the containers were returned; leaflets were dropped on the North campus ordering students to evacuate to the South; and any students who had not evacuated by the three-hour deadline would be presumed to be thieves and “treated accordingly.”
It is difficult to read these materials and arrive at the board’s conclusion, as per the “fake” charge, that this amounted to a willful attack on the Daily Northwestern’s reporting or an attempt to construct an alternative reality. A smart reader of this text would realize that its authors were attempting something akin to that produced by The Onion, an satirical news publication that engages in a form that enjoys wide constitutional protections.
At this point, the board, which counts among its members distinguished alumni, administrators, faculty and students, claims that the matter was out of its hands. “Any charging decision is made by the State’s Attorney alone,” it asserts. Here, the board of Students Publishing Co. appears to be out of step with a growing faction of the Wildcat family, including nearly 90 members of the faculty and student organizations who signed the letter supporting the students.
A Change.org petition has garnered roughly 5,000 signatures. The student editorial board has also expressed its opposition to the parent company’s action to “engage the criminal justice system during this investigation.” Indeed, the spirit of the board’s actions seems at odds with Northwestern University’s demonstration policy, which fronts this assertion. “Northwestern welcomes the expression of ideas, including viewpoints that may be considered unorthodox or unpopular.”
To his credit, Students Publishing board Chair John Byrne announced his intention to intervene and “pursue a resolution to this matter that results in nothing punitive or permanent.” This was the least the board could do. Still, Byrne’s claim that “we didn’t understand how these complaints started a process that we could no longer control — and something we never intended” rings hollow and naïve.
Far too frequently, seemingly minor complaints to the police escalate in ways that have unintentional and terrible consequences, especially when they involve African Americans and other people of color. Byrne’s action cannot undo the fact that members of our community were sent scrambling to protect themselves from the potential of not inconsequential legal punishments and the stress and chilling effects this has had on them, their families and members of their communities. It is a faint gesture eclipsed by a much larger movement that is determined to remedy the problem of the overpolicing of certain communities and the criminalization of conduct that might otherwise be considered innocuous.
The Northwestern students’ action — their act of civil disobedience — is an invitation to a broad discussion about the place and power of peaceful protest and political satire, a form that enjoys wide constitutional protections and dates to the country’s founding. It is also another reminder of the value of the kinds of complex, contingent thinking and reasoned debate in these heated times.
As civil rights icon U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia counseled: “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
We should be repeating this mantra to young people.
Brett Gadsden is a history professor at Northwestern University.