The group Foundation for Individuals Rights and Expression, or FIRE, is calling public attention to the student newspaper and the termination of Jim Rodenbush, who was director of student media at IU until he was fired Oct. 14.
According to the Indianapolis Star newspaper, a university dean informed Rodenbush the school had “lost trust” in him after the advisor was told to drop “front page news coverage” from the student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. The advisor ignored the email, however, which ultimately cost him his job.
“I was terminated because I was unwilling to censor student media. 100%,” Rodenbush told the IndyStar. “I have no reason to believe otherwise.”
According to FIRE spokesman Dominic Colletti, the IU administration took such aggressive action because, ironically, the newspaper’s upcoming edition planned to rip its own university for being ranked near the bottom in free speech.
That ranking, which came from FIRE in September, placed Indiana University 255 out of 257 schools in the nation and the lowest of any public university.
“The paper was reporting negatively on the university, most notably in the week before [the university] started trying to control the student newspaper's content,” he tells AFN.
The next publishing date for the Daily Student was Oct. 16, two days after Rodenbush was terminated, but university officials forced the school newspaper to cease its publishing plans a day after his firing.
