Editor’s note: This is in response to the Daily Lobo’s decision to censor its Wednesday edition in a show of solidarity with the Central New Mexico Community College’s newspaper the Chronicle, which CNM administrators shut down March 26. All Daily Lobo stories for that day ran online, but the paper, with the exception of an explanatory editorial, had nothing but ads and X’s where content would have gone. The Chronicle was reinstated on Wednesday. For details, see “CNM paper back on stands, staff rehired,” published in Thursday’s Daily Lobo.
Editor,
Elizabeth Cleary’s swift move to censor the March 27 edition of the Daily Lobo was one of the bravest and boldest editorial decisions that I have ever seen.
By doing so, Cleary and her staff helped save the voice of a sister institution whose First Amendment rights were clearly violated. And the message they delivered dealt a knockout punch.
While UNM school administrators kept silent and chose not to get involved in a situation that stank of censorship, the Daily Lobo stepped forward and defended a valued neighbor who was being whipped and bullied.
The Daily Lobo reminds us, to paraphrase John Donne, that UNM is not an island and that we are all just “a piece of the continent” and “a part of the main.”
I am keeping a copy of that newspaper as a souvenir because it will always remind me for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
Chuck Reuben
UNM staff
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