“Don’t publish anything that might offend anyone.”

FIRE reports.

It’s Already Been a Remarkably Bad Year for Student Press

Many student journalists are being taught an unfortunate lesson by college administrators and their fellow students lately: Don’t publish anything that might offend anyone.

That this advice is antithetical to a free press, and that journalists cannot be held responsible for how their readers react to opinions they publish, doesn’t seem to matter all that much to the people demanding they be censored.

These themes have played out at a number of colleges and universities recently.

Wesleyan University

As you have probably heard by now, student newspaper The Wesleyan Argus faced a petition last month calling for its defunding and destruction after it published an op-ed by student and staff writer Bryan Stascavage that criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. Since this op-ed was published and the petition gained traction on campus, the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) has been scrambling to create what Alex Garcia, WSA member and co-president of student entrepreneurship group Kai Wesleyan, calls a “well-thought-out and structural change” to the student press on Wesleyan’s campus.