Without warning or notice the Union had several newspaper stands removed by groundskeepers before distribution of the April 2 issue.

The move was prompted after Joe Saldana, grounds and operations supervisor, received calls from his groundskeepers about newspapers being displaced due to wind.

“The wind was crazy that day,” Saldana said. “I was getting a lot of calls from my groundskeepers about the situation, so I told them to grab the racks and move them and we’d let you guys [the Union] know. We had the same problem last spring, this just happened to be a case of bad timing.”

The call to remove the racks was one that Tom Brown, director of facilities, did not know about.

“I was unaware of it and that direction did not come from me last week,” Brown said. “In no way did it have any bearing on what [the Union] published. Quite honestly we wouldn’t be aware of what you’re going to publish ahead of time.”

Brown affirmed that the front page story, which showcased the teachers’ protest for a higher pay increase, was not part of the reasoning behind the removal.

“I wasn’t even aware of this article until I was in the vice president’s office and read it,” he said.

Brown says that the removal was a miscommunication and was more of a coincidence than anything else.

“I believe it was a total miscommunication,” Brown said. “I think it was an anomaly of the timing and totally coincidental. Quite honestly, it couldn’t come at a worse time because in no way do I believe anybody would do something to hinder a story.”

While the latest removal was caused by the wind, the Union has, in the past, been censored by a faculty member who removed stacks of the newspaper based on content.

“I’ve been on this campus so long and I’ve been a dean so long,” Tom Lew, dean of humanities, said. “I have seen things happen, that you might ascribe a cause and effect relationship to in which there really was no cause and effect relationship. I have seen some things occur that are just so bizarre and unusual that you would just not believe it in a book of fiction. So, one thing I’ve learned as an administrator is not jump to conclusions but address the facts of the situation or the incident… This surprises me.”

The issue of wind and the newspapers has become a reoccurring problem for the groundskeepers and Saldana hope there is something that can be done to fix the problem.

“We’re hoping we can find a solution for this in the future to prevent this,” he said.