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'Streaker' photo causes provost to pull recruitment flyer
July 11, 2006
NORTH
CAROLINA — It is not every day that one sees men in thong
underwear, and that is exactly what student editors at North Carolina State
University were thinking when they created their
recruitment flyer.
But a
provost did not share the students’ vision, or at least he did not want
the flyer with the exposed buttocks in a photo of campus streakers in an
orientation packet for incoming students.
Editors for the
Technician, the student newspaper at
NCSU, said they were notified Wednesday that a recruitment flyer for student
media would be pulled from packets created for an incoming student orientation
held Thursday and Friday.
Provost Larry Nielsen could not be reached
for comment, but he
told
the Technician that he did not feel the
flyers were appropriate for orientation. The flyers contain a picture of a
Technician reporter being hugged by a
group of “shamrock streakers” on St. Patrick’s Day, said Tyler
Dukes, Technician editor in
chief.
“[The picture] shows [the reporter] in the middle of
this group of guys and she’s laughing, but of course you can see their
rear ends which had shamrocks painted on them,” Dukes said.
Dukes said he met with Nielsen and other administrators Thursday to
discuss the situation. After an hour long meeting, both sides agreed that the
flyers could be included in the packets for future orientations this summer with
a sticker over the picture in question that would read, “Why is this
sticker here? Visit the
Technicianonline.com for the whole
story,” Dukes said.
The flyers were distributed in packets at
another orientation session for incoming freshmen that started
yesterday.
“By referring people to our Web site we were able to
reach our short term goal of [recruiting students] without caving to the
administration,” Dukes said.
Dukes said he originally wanted
the sticker to say “censored.” But he said Nielsen did not like that
idea because he felt he was not censoring the paper. However, administrators did
agree to pay for the cost of the stickers as well as reimbursing the paper for
the flyers that were pulled from last week’s orientation. Dukes said that
should cost administrators around $650.
“We’re going to
update our Web site and update the story and we’re also going to keep the
story on our homepage as a feature story so anyone who gets a censored copy of
the flyer can visit our homepage all summer,” Dukes said, adding that the
paper’s staff would be handing out uncensored copies of the flyer at their
informational table during orientation as well.
Dukes said he did not
anticipate he would have any other problems with administrators and said the
whole situation was “a learning experience.”
“I
think it kind of improved the relationship [between the newspaper and the
administration] because the administration got to sit around with these student
media leaders and see how they think,” Dukes
said.
—by Suzanne Bell, SPLC
staff writer
© 2006 Student Press Law Center
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