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EMCVT General Manager Kelly Wolff said the pressure from the college is a form of blackmail.

"The issue is that the law, and our binding legal contract with the university, says the university will not assert editorial control over the publications," Wolff said.

The letter from the university, dated Feb. 8, details the Commission on Student Affairs' opinion of the anonymous posting feature on the Web site of the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times. It also cites the "discontent among students, faculty, staff, administrators and others." The letter was written by Michelle McLeese, chair of the Commission.

Collegiate Times Editor-in-Chief Sara Mitchell said the comments are "community moderated," but are not edited before being posted. However, if a reader "flags" a comment, the paper's public editor evaluates whether the comment should be "buried by moderation," in which case the comment is not deleted but made so readers must intentionally click a link to read it.

McLeese also wrote that after a conversation between Commission members, faculty, administrators and members of the editorial staff at the Collegiate Times, the paper made no changes, which led the Commission to propose the actions in the letter.

These proposed actions include not renewing a contract under which the EMCVT receives some funding from the university, "until the Commission has resolved its discontent with the CT and its online commenting system."

However, in the EMCVT's response letter, written by Wolff, she says the agreement between the EMCVT and the university stipulates 24 months notice "to rescind or to begin renegotiations" of the contract.

Mitchell said cutting funding to the EMCVT will not hurt the Collegiate Times as much as other media outlets on campus that fall under the EMCVT umbrella. "The funding that we get from the university does not directly go to the [Collegiate Times] as much as it does to the other divisions within EMCVT, such as the yearbook, radio station, TV station, literary magazine and so those are the ones that would, in essence, probably be hit more immediately, not to say that we wouldn't feel that," Mitchell said.

The more important message being sent by these threats, Mitchell added, is that the university does not view the paper as a useful or legitimate resource.

The Commission also suggested disallowing the Budget Boards at Virginia Tech to provide funds to any student organizations to place advertisements in the Collegiate Times, McLeese wrote in the letter. The Commission will vote on this matter Feb. 18. McLeese did not return calls by press time.

"We defend students' free speech rights no matter what," Wolff said, adding the students on the paper's staff are the only ones whose opinions matter when deciding the paper's policy on anonymous posting, not hers and not the school's.

If the university follows through with its proposed actions, Wolff said the EMCVT would pursue legal action.

"The issue is: Students decide if [comments] are anonymous. Period," she said.