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Administrators cited the silver cover of the 2000-01 yearbook as a reason for withholding distribution. The university's colors are green and orange.

Tiffany Hayes, editor of the 2001-02 Rattler, said administrators have prohibited her from distributing last year's book, citing problems with the color of the cover, the book's title, grammatical errors and missing photo captions. In the Kentucky State case, Kincaid v. Gibson, administrators cited the same problems. After a seven-year fight, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down Kentucky State's confiscation of the book in January 2001.

The only difference at Florida A&M was an editor's note, written by 2000-01 editor Holly McGee, that may have played a role in the censorship. In her note, McGee questioned the disappearance of $10,000 from the yearbook's account. She said the missing money forced the yearbook to abandon its original idea for a color photo on the cover and resulted in fewer total pages.

As a result, McGee decided on a silver cover, symbolizing the new millennium, and the title, "The Little Black Book." She said administrators did not like the idea of a silver cover when the university's colors were orange and green.

While the yearbooks sit locked away, McGee and Hayes have pressed the administration for answers. Hayes met with student activities director Ronald Joe and interim President Henry Lewis on Tuesday to discuss the matter. Lewis gave Hayes a copy of a yearbook marked with grammatical errors in 15 places that he wanted corrected.

"The president told me that if I could find the money in the budget to fix the errors, then after they were fixed, I could distribute the book," Hayes said.

It would cost the yearbook about $2,000 to have Jostens, the company that prints the book, make stickers to paste on top of the grammatical errors that Lewis found, Hayes said. The university has declined to buy the stickers, but volunteered to pay the salaries of yearbook staffers to apply them to nearly 1,000 copies of the yearbook.

When contacted, Joe said the situation had been "amicably resolved" and declined further comment.

Hayes, however, said she has not decided whether she would comply with Lewis' request. She must make her decision before she meets with the administrators again on Jan. 30.

"We don't have enough money in the budget for the book that we're working on now, let alone the book that's already been printed," she said. "In an attempt to let the students have something, I suppose we could make cuts to [next year's] book."

Even though the administration appears to have dropped its complaints about the editor's note, McGee said, she still believes it was the point of contention.

"I think it boils down to the fact that the money came up missing," she said. "No one ever explained it to me. They don't want people to hear about it. Otherwise someone would have to take the fall for it."

The money — part of the yearbook's operating budget — disappeared from the account two weeks before last spring's exams. McGee said she inquired about its disappearance, but when she got no answers, she wrote the editor's note.

"To the sneaky, back-handed and disrespectful person who simply moved more than $10,000 from the yearbook budget without so much as a 'by your leave,' you should be ashamed of yourself," McGee wrote. "What gave you the right to cheat both the yearbook and the students of this institution?"

Joe, who also serves as the yearbook adviser, said he had no comment about the missing funds.

To complicate matters for the yearbook staff, the Rattler's office was moved in April to a building that has since become a construction zone — effectively barring students from the area.