Student Press Law Center | CM Life
Despite now-deleted tweets showing burning copies of CM Life and hundreds of missing copies of Central Michigan University’s student newspaper, some fraternity members are now sorry. Kind of.
On Wednesday, Student Press Law Center reported on missing and vandalized copies of CM Life after the newspaper ran a series of stories on Delta Chi, a fraternity that had been suspended last year. Rex Santus reported for SPLC that along with stolen newspapers, members of another fraternity at the school tweeted a photo of the newspapers being set on fire and another with a stack of the papers and “Thanks for the bonfire material.”
(Chapter president Dave) Kobel said his fraternity picked up about 50 copies, collectively, to discuss at a chapter meeting, but it was not meant as censorship. The articles were intended for reading, he said, and the bonfire tweets were “overblown” jokes.
“I guess you could say that we’re sorry,” Kobel said. “We didn’t mean any poor intentions with the tweet. That’s not intention.”
CM Life’s editor-in-chief, Justin Hicks, told SPLC “I called these guys out for refusing to talk to us. That’s when people started getting really mad about it.”
Some of that anger was taken out on the newspapers, and some on Hicks himself, who wrote an editorial about why the newspaper has continued its reporting. SPLC reports that one former fraternity member threatened to “bitch slap” Hicks. One student tried to start something with #firejustinhicks, but that’s gone nowhere. Hicks, meanwhile, seems to be trying to keep things civil on Twitter.
@bradjlake I think you mean libel.
— Justin P. Hicks (@JustinPHicks) April 23, 2014
