I have nothing against advisers in college newsrooms, except that so often advising is just a front for interfering.

This story about the St. Louis University student paper (via Romenesko) made me cringe.

Basically, the administration might ban the old adviser from the newsroom because he keeps showing up even on production nights even though the adminisration hired a new full-time adviser as part of process to “rewrite the newspaper’s charter.”

“We think it serves everybody to have one voice as an adviser,” [university spokesman Jeff] Fowler said. “You shouldn’t have two people with different ideas causing confusion.”

Mindwash the baby watchdogs, that’s bold. If you can prevent journalists from growing up as critical thinkers, you’ve got a pretty effective censorship tool. Ugh, the cringe-count is astronomical. The sad part is this kind of interfering from all sides probably isn’t that rare. I’d like to think student editors would better rise to the challenge if they weren’t coddled or threatened all the time.

Thank goodness for smart student editors willing to train a new guard, independent budgeting, an administration that wouldn’t dare censor, and Al Donnelly. The memory of free reign might make the rest of our careers harder, but thank goodness for the Evergreen, where our mistakes and our triumphs were always our own.