The following piece comes courtesy of an ex-New York University student who chronicles an undergraduate career impeded by what he describes as an orchestrated campaign of harassment by university administrators.

NEW YORK CITY- From the inception of the Village Alternative as a strong conservative student newspaper presence at New York University, various parties at the school have sought its marginalization and eventual eradication.

As columnist John Leo wrote in the February 12, 1996 edition of U.S. News & World Report: "At New York University, when Jeff Barea tried to register the Alternative as a conservative student organization, he was turned down on grounds that it would duplicate an existing group -- a campus Republican club -- and no duplicate clubs are permitted. Barea notes that the university has had six Korean student organizations, three Asian clubs, six black-affiliated organizations, three Latin clubs, two black and Latino clubs and four apparently non-duplicating socialist clubs. After much wheedling, the university backed down and accepted his group."

At the beginning of the Spring 1997 semester, Pam Bolen, the director of NYU’s Loeb Student Center, refused to allow the Village Alternative to place a news stand in the lobby of that building. Bolen did this in direct violation of university policy. By the end of the semester, Dr. Margo Marshak, vice president for Student Affairs, Jonathan Lisp, then-chairman of the Student Senate, and Farrah Pepper, then-chairman of the Student Activities Board (SAB), had stated their support of Bolen’s brazen contradiction of university rules and procedures.

The Guidelines for the Use of University Facilities that the University Senate adopted clearly states that access should be provided. Bolen’s office has set aside 90% of the space in Loeb to provide for the distribution of off-campus, for-profit publications. According to guideline #10, "the assignment of space for non-academic purposes within a University facility...will be in accordance with the following schedule of priorities...student organizations in Loeb."

At a meeting attended by the chairman of the SAB (Ms. Pepper), who coincidentally represented the interests of the Washington Square News (our competitor) on the SAB, Ms. Bolen defended her decision to provide space and a news stand for the Village Voice at the expense of the Village Alternative. Her rationale? She stated that she had called the Village Voice to ask them to remove it, but they didn’t, so she decided to let it remain. Interestingly, Leonard Stern, publisher of the Village Voice, also serves on the NYU Board of Trustees.

Loeb Student Center provides two floors of office space to the Washington Square News, along with phone banks and two billiard tables. The WSN also has a large advertising display stand with lights, an LDC display, and advertisements such as Calvin Klein showing two women kissing. By contrast, Bolen denied the Village Alternative’s request to have just one phone placed in its office (the office has since been taken away by a vote of the SAB).

Bolen’s decision to ban the newsstand has been followed by the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences’ directive to ban VA stands from all of its buildings. These bans have created an atmosphere of censorship and ideological discrimination.

As NYU Professor Herb London, noted scholar and Village Alternative faculty advisor, stated, "We are dealing with First Amendment provisions that I’m sure you can appreciate. Here again, university guidelines are unambiguous: ‘all shades of political opinion should be given an opportunity for expression.’"

Village Alternative newsstands have also been vandalized and defaced at other locations across campus, including the lobby of the Student Activities Annex (which houses the offices of the Office of Student Activities, SAB and Queer Union). One such act occurred in full view of Village Alternative staffers by an NYU employee who was later remonstrated.

An informant on the Student Senate relayed to me at the beginning of the Fall 1997 semester that NYU would rather close down Loeb Student Center than allow the Village Alternative to have access, and that they will be changing university policy to make sure. The Student Senate then voted to change the way student organizations were registered, requiring a vote of the Student Activities Board. Naturally, SAB (after providing conflicting information) denied the Village Alternative status as a student organization, despite having operated at NYU for two years.

As publisher of the Village Alternative, I have had my share of harassment by various administrators. Every semester my scholarship is revoked, then returned months later. Key documents in my file are routinely "lost," requiring a song and dance to restore the information. I was graded a "D" in Socialist Theory despite there being no test or paper assigned. Grading was based on the professor’s opinion of my understanding of the profoundness of socialist theories.

And after taking a leave of absence in November 1997 with the permission of the dean of students, that permission was again "lost" from my file and I was de-enrolled from NYU, requiring me to reapply for admission. When I appealed to the dean of students, he called me a troublemaker and denied my request to register for the Spring 1998 semester. My appeals to the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences have been summarily rejected.

Since the beginning of 1997, NYU’s conservative witch-hunt has resulted in their boldly and unethically trying to destroy any trace of the conservative movement that the Village Alternative had started, including its founder and publisher.

Should NYU succeed in removing all vestiges of the Village Alternative from its environs, its legacy will survive. When the Village Alternative first started, there were no conservative organizations, and as John Leo pointed out in his column, there were 4 socialist organizations. Today, there is even a Young Americans for Freedom chapter active on campus.

Currently, the Village Alternative is seeking a pro-bono attorney to help take these matters to the court system and force NYU to uphold its own policies and protect the rights of conservative students at NYU to express themselves freely.