The lead story in Thursday's Kentucky Kernel was about the "free speech" crisis facing the Kentucky State University student publications. The students are up in arms over the fact that the University administration wants some input regarding the student newspaper and yearbook.
Let's be honest. KSU provided more than $12,000 for the yearbooks alone and, I presume, funds the newspaper. If the newspaper staff has a problem with the University's having a say in how its money is spent, let them follow the example of the Kernel and go independent.
I know the murmurs that are going on - it was student fees, not school money!
Sure, and the tuition you pay to UK is still your money, right?
While free speech is important, its relation to the American media is highly overrated.
As an extreme hypothetical, do you think that Tiffany's million dollar ad budget and daily ads in the New York Times aren't going to try and skew the nature of the part of the paper where its ads run?
If the Times doesn't like it, the paper simply can ask Tiffany's to take its money elsewhere.
Why doesn't the KSU newspaper simply tell the University to do the same?
One of the basic elements of free speech that often gets overlooked is that while the First Amendment guarantees any person the right to say or print whatever he or she wishes, it does not impose an obligation on the government or any other citizen to pay for it.
To further clarify the issue, let me state unequivocally that I am in favor of cutting off all public funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and every other related group. The fans of Barney the Dinosaur spent tens of millions of dollars on his toys and videos last year - let them foot the bill for producing his TV show.
Private funding of the arts will work. I am not aware of any government subsidies to the Metropolitan Opera, and they seem to be doing OK, even though the majority of the people that I know feel the same way about opera that they do about nude people who are painted blue, dancing around a potted plant and chanting Sanskrit war poems (which I am sure the NEA would consider art).
As always, I feel compelled to close with a witty saying to prove my point. In this case, there happens to be a very appropriate one: "The one who pays the fiddler gets to call the tune."
Kevin Bryant
First-year law student
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