'Streaker' photo causes provost to pull recruitment flyer


© 2006 Student Press Law Center

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

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