After admitting to taking 300 issues of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student publication, the Tech, and recycling the issues, two campus police officers have been suspended without pay, reports the Student Press Law Center (SPLC).
On March 17, the two uniformed officers threw away issues of the publication, which featured a front-page story of an MIT campus police officer who was arrested for drug trafficking. When student editors learned of the officers throwing away copies, they filed a police report. The following day, represented by their union, the officers admitted to stealing the papers.
According to SPLC, 8,000 issues of the publication are distributed throughout the campus. During the incident, about 5 percent of issues were stolen; however, Tech editors were able to restore a bulk of copies to their proper stands.
The executive editor at the student publication, Michael McGraw-Herdeg, said the episode was a form of censorship, although he doesn’t think the incident was malicious or was deliberately designed to censor the newspaper.
Officials for MIT said the investigation of the incident is still ongoing.
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