Southwestern College’s student newspaper, The Southwestern College Sun, has been forced to stop the publication of its first issue due to what the school’s administration is calling, “standard business practices.”

What the school is referring to is a policy that is being directed at the Journalism Department that has been in place since 1990, focusing on the department’s practices for its printing needs.

The policy states that the department must put its printing needs to a bidding process, awarding the newspaper’s services to the highest bidder.

According to Southwestern Community and Governmental Relations Officer Chris Bender, the policy was made in the best interests of the taxpayers.

“The process is in place to protect the taxpayers and make sure they’re getting the best value for their dollar,” Bender said.

However, he also stated that this process is implemented school-wide.

“That’s the same process that every other department on campus is subject to, it’s not just for the college newspaper.

“It was unfortunately found that the newspaper, maybe by no fault of its own, was not in compliance with that particular policy.”

Bender went on to say that administration is working hard to find a way for the Sun to return to its print edition.

The Sun’s staff, however, see this move as a violation of its first amendment rights.

Editor-in-Chief Diana Inocencio claims that the newspaper was threatened with a cease-and-desist letter from the school and were suggested to stop printing if the newspaper did not want to face ramifications, which included the suspension and possible firing of Max Branscomb, the Sun’s adviser.

“I think it’s really ridiculous. We’re not a club or an independent organization, we’re a class that produces the paper. To ask us not to produce the paper means  [administration] does not want us to do our course work,” Inocencio said.

She also states that although the school has told them that they can produce an online paper, the students from the Sun’s staff have not “understood or harness the potential [the online publication] has” and calls the print edition the “heart and soul” of the newspaper.

Senior Staff Writer Lindsay Winkler feels that the move is an act of retaliation by administration, citing that this might be a way for administration to silence the paper due to the arrival of what she considers to be a controversial election to choose the school’s governing board.

“We were definitely going to cover a lot of topics that may have been inconvenient to come out with before an election, so I think that was a motivating factor,” Winkler said.

Winkler also mentions that despite the hardships the Sun is currently facing, the paper has managed a way to move forward with its publication.

“We took it upon ourselves to make a statement, and the way we made that statement was by raising money to print our own paper.”

Winkler claims that she finds it hard to believe that the school just rediscovered this policy despite its longevity for 20 years.

She also said that the school’s actions toward the Sun may have something to do with the newspaper’s previous run-ins with Raj Chopra, Southwestern’s president.

She mentioned that the Sun had published several stories on him in the past, including an incident that found Chopra plagiarizing a speech that he gave, who he later held his secretary responsible for, informing four teachers that they could not be on campus after taking part in a non-violent rally and in an interview with the Sun, admitting to accepting “a measly $15,000 raise” shortly after cutting a number of classes.

With all the incidents in the past, Winkler believes Chopra may be doing this as an act of spite.

“He [Chopra] has had numerous ‘no confidence’ votes by all the constituents on campus. He is constantly being accused of not adhering to a statewide policy concerning shared governance.

“It’s just one thing after another, and his leadership style is very aggressive.”

Senior Staff Writer Albert Fulcher claims that the Sun’s staff made the public aware of the situation as a way to fight back against administration.

“The editors and the people who had been here for a couple of years got together and we decided that we had to come up with a plan,” Fulcher said, “we had a plan A and a plan B. Plan A was that if they gave us any grief, we were going to contact the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), FIRE and the Student Press Law Center in order to put pressure and to leave us alone.

“We also had a plan B, where if it came to the point where they were going to keep us from printing or our adviser was threatened with his job, we were going to beat them at their own game.”

In a joint press statement released by both the Sun and Southwestern College, both sides are currently negotiating an agreement that can have the Sun return to being printed under the school’s funding by November.

In a separate statement released by Chopra, he said, “Working together, the administration, the advisor of the Southwestern College Sun and its editorial board are seeking a way to continue printing the college newspaper. The administration and Sun have identified measures that could allow the paper to be printed until a long-term agreement can be reached.”