News

Regents lambast Cardinal

The Daily Cardinal should stop claiming it is the “official student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin,” UW regents agreed at a special meeting here Saturday.

The regents also questioned whether the Cardinal’s Faculty Advisory Committee should be continued.

UW Vice-President Robert Taylor, a member of the Cardinal Board of Control, promised to discuss dropping the “official student newspaper” claim with the other members of the board.

Regent Walter Renk, Sun Prairie, praised the administration for refusing to help the Cardinal mail its “unorientation” issue to incoming freshmen.

Administration officials had denied the Cardinal access to University mailing lists because of the use of the obscene words and the alleged political slant of the “unorientation” issue.

The Cardinal did obtain the lists from other sources after the offending words had been blacked out.

Renk said he didn’t believe the Cardinal should be permitted to publish on campus. He said a competing newspaper (the Badger Herald) will be published off campus this fall, and the Cardinal shouldn’t be permitted to continue on campus.

The Cardinal is printed in the facilities rented to it by the school of journalism.

Regent Bernard Ziegler, chairman of the regents’ committee on the Cardinal, said the unorientation issue was “the poorest example of journalism I’ve seen.”

“It is inflammatory and poorly written,” Ziegler said. “It’s a piece of junk.”

Ziegler said the Cardinal had “a captive audience” on the campus, but students have “clout” over the paper because they elect the student members of the Cardinal Board.

“The election comes up this fall, and I hope the board and the editor will be fired,” Ziegler said. “Matters like this will be decided by the students, and they’ll decide if this is the trash they want to read.”