Conservative Oregon State Students Sue over Treatment of Newspaper

Claim university trying to keep them from distributing on campus

The 9th Circuit on Tuesday revived claims an unwritten policy at Oregon State University severely limited distribution of a student-run conservative newspaper.

OSU Students Alliance had published and widely distributed the Liberty, an independent student newspaper with a right-wing bent, across the university's Corvallis campus since 2002. Though eligible for some university funding, the Liberty remained independent with private donations and advertising revenue. During the 2008-09 winter term, however, the university's facilities department removed all of the alliance's distribution bins from campus and stacked them near a dumpster in a storage yard.

School officials told Liberty's executive editor William Rogers that the bins had been removed under an unwritten policy prohibiting newsbins for "off-campus" publications in all but two designated locations on campus. The department did not, however, remove bins containing the local Corvallis daily, USA Today and OSU's student-run daily.