CUSU candidate Chris Lillycrop, who was censored by CUSU this week, speaking at hustings on Tuesday.
Union-run newspaper The Cambridge Student (TCS) was prevented from appearing on time this week due to attempts by CUSU to censor its content.
The delay came because the edition, which featured CUSU candidates’ manifestos for the upcoming elections, was stopped at print after Chris Lillycrop’s manifesto for Co-ordination Officer caused a stir amongst CUSU Trustees for “legal reasons”.
Lillycrop’s manifesto included plans to sack an existing CUSU Officer, stating “The Internal Development Officer costs 10% of the CUSU budget: we should stop spending money on a position we do not need, and cannot afford”.
The Officer referred to is currently employed by CUSU to the tune of £39,250 each year.
TCS censorshop: Lillycrop gets the chop in this week's TCS
Lillycrop, an undergrad at St.Catz, wanted to remove this role in response to CUSU’s “imminent budget crisis of £80k a year, particularly since the role was created at a time when it seemed CUSU was about to be transformed by vastly increased University funding”.
However, the Sabbatical Officers, including Chigbo, were unhappy with the pledge and in a weekly meeting voted that the statement was not suitable for print.
In response, the TCS editors “chose to delay printing and asked the trustees to seek professional legal advice, rather than relying on the opinions of those without the necessary qualifications to provide a clear view”.
Today it emerged that CUSU were in the wrong and had acted illegally by redacting Lillycrop’s manifesto and an associated comment piece.
In an exclusive interview for The Tab, Lillycrop explained that “there were no sufficient legal grounds to redact my manifesto without permission… especially since when writing my manifesto I took pains to stick by the Staff-Student guidelines that had been drafted by the Development Manager himself”.
Lillycrop said that CUSU have handled the matter “pretty poorly” and even the TCS editors admitted in a statement that “The situation was poorly handled by the trustees. Whilst CUSU, as TCS’ publisher, does of course have a responsibility to make sure the content we print is legal, they also have a responsibility to seek thorough professional advice before removing articles from the paper”.
The debacle follows a bad week for CUSU President Chigbo who was forced to appeal to the CUSU Council on Monday against rulings criticising his conduct during the NUS affiliation campaign and comes amongst rumours of growing frustration between the two parties.
The paper, which will still black out parts of Lillycrop’s manifesto, will now be distributed on Saturday morning – 48 hours later than their normal Thursday distribution day.
this is a complete load of bollocks….
what's this supposed to mean?
"Constitution
The Cambridge Student Constitution was last amended and approved by CUSU Council in May 2008.
A. Name
A.1 The Cambridge Student (referred to in this constitution as 'the Paper') shall be an editorially independent student paper supported by Cambridge University Students' Union for the benefit of all students at Cambridge.
A.2 The Paper shall be run in accordance with this constitution."
cusu has no right to do this, surely? get a life. the proposed measure seems intelligent.
TCS has been online since yesterday evening – http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk:8080/business/TCSLentIs…
If you read the ediorial on p14, it looks like the editors made a stand against CUSU by refusing to print without proper legal advice. Saying the TCS editors "admitted" things were handled badly is a bit misleading – it's more like they made a point of drawing attention to it.
Good for the TCS people for pulling the paper. Can't be easy having to rely on those imbeciles for funding…
What is "TCS"?
The Cambridge Student
as if the tab needed any more help in its rise to cambridge domination!
someone said (not sure if it's true?) that you guys already have double the number of unique users (ie readers) that tcs or varsity get in a week!
TCS could have gone to print on time if the editors had accepted CUSU's attempts to censor the paper.
"Editorial independence is the freedom of editors to make decisions without interference from the owners of a publication."
CUSU is a waste of space. Time to get rid
And for that matter, so are Varsity and TCS. Get rid!!
"TCS censorship" is misleading – the manifestos are not part of the paper, just distributed with it.
Printing was delayed as CUSU were unhappy with TCS printing two articles that do appear in the paper, on page 2 and page 14, which you can view here:
http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk:8080/business/TCSLentIs…
Aside from the articles in the paper itself, I believe that students should have the right to know what is in a candidate's manifesto before they can be expected to vote.
I'm not saying I support the redaction, but isn't "CUSU…acted illegally" going a bit far? I'm no lawyer, but if they redacted it because they (incorrectly) believed they were obliged by employment law to do so, and then it turned out they weren't, that doesn't sound much like breaking the law.
found this on their website ???
http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/about/independence/
"What about election coverage in TCS?
CUSU Officers and staff have absolutely no right or practical ability to influence the paper's coverage of student or any other elections….. , there are serious sanctions to which CUSU officers would be subject, both from the Elections Committee and possibly from the University, were they to unduly influence a publication that was supposed to be editorially independent. The University Junior Proctor has recognised TCS' editorial independence, and the CUSU is not aware of any complaint based on the paper being a CUSU mouthpiece ever being upheld. The only people who control TCS endorsements or coverage in elections are the editors and journalists of TCS. Period."
I think this is just jealousy. The Tab wishes they had an intrepid and eloquent journalist like Mr. Mack Rivling. Personally I thought the article on bog snorkelling was one of the most informative and just downright interesting pieces of Cambridge journalism that I've ever read.
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