The Retrograde, an independent, student-run publication that started last year after campus officials dismantled the staff of the longstanding university newspaper, The Mercury, announced Monday evening that university officials have granted the publication access to four distribution sites across campus. Before the ban, papers were distributed in 43 locations across campus.
A letter sent to student journalists Monday by University President Prabhas Moghe states that The Retrograde will be allowed to be distributed in the student union, activity center, and two locations in the student services building.
This is not the first time UTD student journalists have struggled to distribute their work due to what they describe as university officials' retaliatory actions.
Last year, campus leaders officially shuttered The Mercury when the entire staff went on strike following the removal of Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez as editor-in-chief. Documents shared with the Observer show that Student Media Director Lydia Lum attempted to oust Gutierrez by accusing the journalist of violating the student media’s governing bylaws. The Mercury staff, on the other hand, said Gutierrez’s removal was consistent with speech-squashing actions taken by university officials after student reporters covered a pro-Palestine encampment that was set up on campus in May 2024.
“All of our management team and staff are in agreement where the conditions we've been subjected to aren't great,” Gutierrez told the Observer last year. “If this is something where they're going to be attacking us because we don't want to commit ourselves to censorship, then we will just be an independent student publication apart from the university.”
Student journalists at UT Dallas are fighting to continue publishing their newspaper after the administration fired their editor in retaliation for the students’ writing. The students launched their own paper @retrograde_news to continue reporting without interference. pic.twitter.com/67dExj8l4G
— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) January 24, 2025
In January, the student journalists who started The Retrograde, which university officials do not have editorial control over (a standard practice across student media), announced that university officials had begun removing dozens of newspaper stands from campus in advance of the independent publication's first distribution. When students returned to campus this fall, all of the kiosks had been removed.
A spokesperson for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) told the Observer that “even with the reversal” of a full-fledged ban on The Retrograde distributing on campus, “UTD continues to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint.” Student journalists will be on campus throughout Tuesday to pass out newspapers by hand.
“We do what we want as student journalists and we don’t have to fear campus reprisal when it comes to our actions,” Gutierrez told FIRE. “The administration has been very insistent that they don’t want this structure to exist at all.”
