Show support for COD journalists

The replacement of College of DuPage professor Cathy Stablein as adviser to the Courier student newspaper is a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of a highly skilled, award-winning adviser who encourages students to go after the news, good or bad.

This action by COD administration is academically crippling and morally wrong. She was removed on the basis that she cannot handle her duties advising the Courier and restructuring the journalism program. But this is just a legal smoke screen.

In April, the voting power on COD’s board of trustees shifted back to the group led by Mike McKinnon in 2009. This is the same bloc that tried to get the Courier under President Robert Breuder’s control, and in a lame-duck move despite heated criticism, extended Breuder’s contract after only four months on the job. A member from that bloc, Dave Carlin, was just elected board chairman, and less than one month later, our adviser was pulled.

We have been working tirelessly to expose an administration that has been trying to control our coverage by using the external relations department to spin the words of our sources, instead of allowing student journalists to do their job. On top of that, they’ve just appointed an external relations employee as the newspaper’s temporary adviser. Stablein’s replacement is not just harmful to the teaching element of the Courier to the student editors, it’s a form of censorship tweaked to bypass the integrity and protection of the Illinois College Campus Press Act.

We are discovering some pretty nasty things COD’s administration is doing. By removing the person who teaches us how to investigate and report these things, they wish to silence the national award-winning and best community college newspaper in Illinois. Please support us at the June 23 COD board meeting.

Vikaas Shanker

Naperville

former editor-in-chief of the Courier