Chancellor Nancy Cantor rescinded a Food Services policy that banned the distribution of student publications in the dining halls Thursday morning. Cantor met with S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Dean Lorraine Branham, who said the policy violated students’ right to free speech.

‘All student publications will be allowed to distribute in the dining halls,’ said Kevin Quinn, Syracuse University’s senior vice president of public affairs. ‘They obviously need to work with food services who will be providing bins.’

Food Services told staff from Jerk magazine in a meeting Feb. 12 they could not distribute issues in the dining centers because of a longstanding policy that banned most publications distribution, except for The Daily Orange, because it created unnecessary waste.

Staff from Jerk met with Food Services Director David George, and Syracuse University spokesman Kevin Morrow after a manager from Graham Dining Center told Katie Allyn Jan. 31 that he did not want the publication in the hall because of its content, said Allyn, Jerk’s editor-at-large.

‘It was clear that it was a policy that wasn’t being enforced for years,’ Branham said. ‘This policy was unwritten, unknown and the magazine had distributed (in dining centers) for years. If you actually thought about it, it made no sense. Someone was suddenly making it a problem because of something they saw in the magazine.’

None of the administrative leaders were aware of the policy, or that Jerk’s staff had been denied from placing their publication in the dining centers. The first time administrators heard about the incident was through The Daily Orange article printed Thursday, Quinn said.

After the Chancellor’s meeting with the Branham, she and Quinn sent an e-mail out to student publications alerting them that the Chancellor had overturned the policy, and they could now distribute freely in the dining centers, said Melissa Chessher, faculty advisor to Jerk magazine.

‘The magazine is elated,’ Chessher said. ‘It’s the perfect solution. I’m glad I’m not the only one who was baffled by the whole thing.’

Branham believes the university has a responsibility to not limit freedom of speech, she said. Newhouse’s role is to make students aware of what those rights are, she said.

‘As a school of communications we understand it to be one of the most important civil liberties,’ she said.

rastrum@syr.edu

– Kathleen Ronayne, asst. news editor, contributed reporting to this article.

Published on February 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm