Andrea Diaz
Staff Writer
During the maelstrom of criticism facing the university, BYU-I allegedly blocked its student newspaper, the Scroll, from reporting on student protests of the University’s Medicaid policy.
Brigham Young University Idaho (BYU-I) is located in Rexburg, Idaho and is managed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), more commonly known as the Mormon Church.
The university introduced a policy change that barred students from using Medicaid as private health insurance.
This brought on many problems such as low-income students not being able to afford other alternatives and thus not being able to enroll for classes.
One of these BYU-I students was Kaydee Edralin.
“I freaked out,” Edralin said. “Obviously, we don’t have a lot of money.”
Idaho introduced a new bill stating that medicaid would be more widely available and have less requirements to be eligible for the insurance. Before the expansion mainly only pregnant women, elderly, and disabled people were really able to get Medicaid.
Now with the expansion you must be an Idaho citizen, meet income limits, and be between the ages of 19 to 64. These new requirements meant a lot of college students would be eligible. This new expansion was suppose to be available in January which is when BYU-I announced they would not accept Medicaid.
Many students saw this as unfair and began protesting, signing petitions, and submitted complaints to the university. After much backlash the university reversed its decision and now accepts Medicaid.
This news was not covered by the BYU-I newspaper. As of Jan. 10, there are no articles involving this topic on the Newsroom website. This could be because BYU-I blocked them from doing so because it was an article that involved controversy. BYU-I was not able to be reached for comment.
According to reporting by the Post Register, the student newspaper would have received major funding cutbacks if they reported on this topic.
The Post Register obtained a recording of a staff meeting that went over this issue.
Similarly, the radio station, KBYI, was told by the administration that they shall not cover the story.
According to an article titled “Freedom of the Press and Student Newspapers” from ThoughtCo.’s website “Student publications at public colleges and universities have the same
First Amendment rights as professional newspapers… Even if student publications receive funding or some other form of support from the college or university where they are based, they still have First Amendment rights, as do underground and independent student papers.”
Overall, college campuses are not allowed to censor their students in any way. Some of the first amendment rights that students have include, but are not limited to: freedom of assembly, freedom to petition,freedom to speak freely, and freedom of the press.
“If a university is confident in its decisions, it shouldn’t stifle coverage of them… If BYU-Idaho is serious about training student journalists, it is doing them an incredible disservice by preventing them from reporting on the news of the day..,” said Idaho Press Coverage.
Here at Idaho State University, we, as students, are encouraged to report on new and interesting news and are not censored by the administration. This way we, as writers, have developed our skills and are more ready to become journalists, writers, and ever important assets to the news and reporting community.
