What do you do when the campus paper prints something you find threatening or offensive? Why, steal the papers before anyone can see what's in them, of course.

Last week, the Framingham State College student paper, the Gatepost, ran an expose of athletic hazing on campus. But lots of people didn't get to read about it, since two students--one of whom plays on the football team--stole over half the 4,000 copy press run in order to suppress the story.

Also last week, 9,000 copies of the University of Connecticut's Daily Campus--90% of the press run--were stolen by two unidentified women. It is thought that the papers were taken in response to a column that criticized campus cultural centers for doing more to divide students than to unite them. The day before the papers were taken, staff writer Josh Levinson accused the school of "propagating ... racism" and promoting segregation by sponsoring separatist student organizations. This is not the first time UConn students have used censorship to express their outrage at the paper's willingness to print racially provocative commentary. Two years ago, The Daily Campus ran David Horowitz's notorious anti-reparations ad. The paper was stolen then, too.

Two weeks ago, a run of Georgia State's The Signal was removed from newsstands and dumped in trash bins along with a note that read, "Are you looking for the Signal? The people have spoken." It is not yet known who "the people" are, or what they have "spoken," but it seems clear enough that whoever they are, they confuse theft with speech. One suspect stands out, however: The Signal has been taking a lot of heat lately from a student group that feels the paper prints racist stories.

Less is known about who took 2300 copies of the South Dakota State Collegian last week, or why they turned up in a trash bin. But odds are it had to to with content that some person or group just had to suppress.

Berkeley tends to be thought of as the place where self-appointed censors trash student newspapers. Even the mayor gets into the act there. But as these examples show, the problem is widespread and common; at more and more campuses, it seems, angry students take it upon themselves to censor ideas and information that they don't want others to see. They don't even understand their actions as censorship: they see themselves as justified in attempting to suppress expression that offends them, and they understand their actions as noble protests rather than as despicable acts of cowardice. Sometimes, they even think of their censorious, felonious behavior as acts of free speech. And , too often, university faculty administrators agree with them.

This is what happened at Brown when the Brown Daily Herald ran David Horowitz's anti-reparations ad. A coalition of student groups stole papers and stormed the offices of the Herald. They demanded that the word "Brown" be removed from the paper's name and that the paper no longer be distributed on campus. They also distributed a flyer announcing not only that their actions were justified but that they were consistent with the principles of free speech: "Members of the coalition do not regret the necessary removal of the papers in protest and self defense. ... The Herald's decision to run the ad ... was a direct assault on communities of color and their allies at Brown. ... The coalition has never opposed free speech."

The president of the university backed up the specious claim that the theft was an act of "civil disobedience," abandoning her initial, poorly received response--that the coalition's actions were "unacceptable"--in favor of a more properly conciliatory hypocrisy. "Even as we uphold our principles, we cannot deny the impact the publication of this advertisement has had on the Brown community as a whole. It was written to be inflammatory. In addition, it was deliberately and deeply hurtful," she wrote. "We have an obligation to look out for each other and to treat each other with respect," she added. "In this particular instance, supporting those members of the community who feel most hurt must also be one of our defining values." Faculty concurred with the proposition that coddling hurt feelings is more important than debating controversial views. As the Director of Brown's Afro-American studies program put it, "This is not a free speech issue. It is a hate speech issue."

The spurious distinction between hate speech and free speech is taking hold on campuses, where opportunistic administrators and intellectually dishonest professors conspire to teach young adults that the proper way to settle their differences is to attempt to silence viewpoints they find offensive. Speech codes send that message, as do sensitivity training seminars, hostile environment harassment policies, and the coercive pegagogical techniques of professors like South Carolina's Lynn Weber.

So we shouldn't be surprised at the complete disregard for freedom of speech and freedom of the press that students display when they steal newspapers. They are being taught to do just that, and they have learned their lesson well. But we should be worried, very worried, about the fact that the future will soon be in their illiberal, ignorant, and misguided hands.

Needless to say, this deserves comparison with the attempts of that gutless wonder, Dick Cheney, to intimidate and censor www.whitehouse.org over that page's parody/biography and photo of quondam postmodernist Lynne Cheney.

Can you imagine the uproar on the part of Rush Limbaugh and similar toads if, a few years ago, Al Gore had tried a similar stunt on behalf of Tipper? But inconsistency and arrant hypocrisy comes more naturally to the whiny, intellectually flimsy Right than breathing.

N. Levitt