Student journalists at the University of Texas at Dallas are on strike following the removal of the paper’s editor-in-chief, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, by administrators. Staff members of the Mercury say that Olivares Gutierrez’s removal is the latest instance of what they see as a pattern of retaliation by administrators following the newspaper’s coverage of a pro-Palestine encampment that was set up on campus on May 1.
According to documents shared with the Observer, Student Media Director Lydia Lum called a Sept. 13 meeting with the school's student media operating board (SMOB) to oust Olivares Gutierrez from his role, which he has held since May 1. Lum alleged Olivares Gutierrez has committed three violations of the bylaws during his tenure as editor-in-chief, including holding multiple student employee positions on campus, causing budget overruns and interfering with her ability to do her job.
Olivares Gutierrez told the Observer that his removal meeting was called with only a day’s notice, and six members of the operating board were not present. Conversations shared with the Observer show that multiple SMOB members — who Olivares Gutierrez believes would have supported him in the hearing — say they were told by Lum “they weren’t needed to attend” the meeting. None of the students were informed of the meeting’s purpose, and one never received a link to the virtual meeting despite asking to attend, the messages show.
Despite presenting evidence he believes contradicts Lum’s claims, Olivares Gutierrez was removed from his position in a 3–2 vote last Friday.
Members of the Mercury have protested each of the charges against Olivares Gutierrez and have ceased production of the campus newspaper until he is reinstated. According to Managing Editor Maria Shaikh, who helped organize the strike, Olivares Gutierrez’s removal is a “disproportionate punishment” following an increasingly tense relationship between the newspaper’s staff and administrators.
“[We] believe that admin is not approaching us objectively and fairly over legitimate concerns, but that they are blowing things out of proportion and using interpersonal issues, dislikes and minor mistakes to punish us for coverage that they do not like,” Shaikh told the Observer. “The admin has not behaved like this in previous years when the Mercury was not doing investigative journalism and muckraking.”
A Pattern of “Punitive” Behavior by Administrators
Staff members of the Mercury have alleged unprofessional treatment by campus administrators since early May, after the students published a series of stories investigating the university’s handling of a pro-Palestine encampment that resulted in the arrests of 21 protesters, including students, faculty and alumni.
According to Olivares Gutierrez and Shaikh, the paper’s advisor, Jonathan Stewart, was demoted following publication of the Mercury's May 20 issue, which included coverage of the encampment. Shaikh also alleges other “punitive” measures by admininstartors that predate Olivares Gutierrez’s termination, such as rearranging the Mercury’s pay structure in a way “that harmed multiple members of management,” and demanding prior review of the Mercury’s editorial content. When prior review was denied, Lum “gave the Mercury an ultimatum” by stating the students will no longer be allowed to attend student media conferences, Shaikh said.
“With Gregorio's removal, it was made apparent to me that the Mercury's lifespan was limited. – Maria Shaikh, Managing Editor of the Mercury
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The Observer reached out to Lum, who directed us to a university spokesperson. The university did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.
“Unless we satisfy [Lum] and give her access to things that historically we have not given advisors access to, such as pitch meetings or a look at our content before publication, then she will continue to hold our conferences as basically hostages,” Shaikh said.
Allowing administrators to review content prior to publication is not a common practice among college media, and denying such review is constitutionally protected at public universities, says Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel with the Student Press Law Center. Hiestand said courts have consistently agreed for over five decades that student publications on public university campuses have the rights of a professional press and do not have to agree to review before publication.
“The law is clear that student editors are the ones that are ultimately responsible for making content decisions and school officials need to have a hands-off sort of policy,” Hiestand said. “School officials cannot require any sort of mandatory prior review of student media.”
Other forms of retaliation, such as barring individuals from attending a conference or removing a staff adviser, are “indirect forms of censorship” that the law center “sees way too often.”
All the incidents leading up to his removal as editor-in-chief have created a “hostile work environment,” Olivares Gutierrez told the Observer. When he was removed from his position, the staff agreed to publish a final issue of the Mercury explaining their decision to strike. Olivares Gutierrez said the students were locked out of their newspaper email accounts following the strike’s announcement.
Each of the events of the last four months has now left the student journalists questioning their willingness to continue the Mercury’s 40-year tradition of publication.
“All of our management team and staff are in agreement where the conditions we've been subjected to aren't great,” Olivares Gutierrez said. “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.”
Hiestand said it is “rare” to see a student media group “completely shut down” operations with a strike. But according to the staff of the Mercury, Olivares Gutierrez’s removal left them with no other options. He has appealed his firing, and the rest of the staff have agreed to give the administrators until Friday to reinstate their editor and meet other demands such as reinstating conferences and ceasing the requirement of prior review. If that happens, the Mercury will live on.
Olivares Gutierrez submitted his appeal on Sept. 17. So far, it doesn’t look promising.
A “Rare” Response to a “Rocky Relationship”
Since filing his appeal to be reinstated as editor-in-chief, Olivares Gutierrez has received conflicting and contradictory information about the handling of his appeals process. Jenni Huffenberger, senior director for marketing communications, told Olivares Gutierrez via email that she, single-handedly, will “take his appeal under consideration” as outlined in the SMOB bylaws.
Student government President Devin Schwartz has stated that, according to SMOB bylaws, the board should have first review of the appeal. Because Olivares Gutierrez has alleged that students were intentionally left out of the first meeting, Schwartz believes a third party should be charged with organizing the appeal hearing to “avoid the mere appearance of impropriety.” A Wednesday afternoon vote by the university’s academic senate — the deliberative body for UTD faculty — supported Schwartz’s proposal.
Lum has claimed, via an email shared with the Observer, that Olivares Gutierrez’s appeal “differs” completely from the SMOB bylaws, and he will have to undergo a different process handed down “from Student Affairs in consultation with other UTD officials.”
(One of the demands of the striking Mercury staff is cleaning up those bylaws so that this confusion doesn’t recur in the future.)
“We just have this super vague, non-functioning set of guidelines, and even then, the people in charge of it don't follow the guidelines that are there,” Olivares Gutierrez said. “It’s just this huge circus. … I hope [they] got some fun trying to humiliate a student publicly. I am glad that I have the level of support I do not only at the Mercury but around the campus community, because if there wasn't that kind of support, it would just be all of this administrative weight coming after me.”
Hiestand said it is unusual for an appeals process to be designated to only one individual, and that in Olivares Gutierrez’s case, a “neutral fact finder” would be appropriate. If the university does not hear his appeal, they will be putting “themselves in a situation where they're gonna leave the students with no recourse but to sue,” Hiestand added.
And if Olivares Gutierrez can show that his firing was directly tied to the Mercury’s editorial content following the Palestine encampment, he’ll have a First Amendment case on his hands.
“The law is clear that student editors are the ones that are ultimately responsible for making content decisions and school officials need to have a hands-off sort of policy." — Mike Hiestand, Student Press Law Center
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For now, Olivares Gutierrez has another concern outside of the strike and appeal. In July, the Mercury’s staff raised thousands of dollars to pay for a records request filed under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA) that will reveal, through approximately 20,000 documents, how campus administrators prepared for and responded to the May 1 pro-Palestine encampment. A batch of those documents was set to be delivered to Olivares Gutierrez’s Mercury email, which he no longer has access to, this Friday.
“We'll be reaching out to them to make sure we actually get those documents,” Olivares Gutierrez said. “This might just be my conspiracy brain thinking, but it's really convenient that they have fired the editor-in-chief leading this investigation into the public records, and then restricted our access to the emails that are used to receive those documents.”
The Mercury’s staff never doubted they would follow Olivares Gutierrez after his firing, Shaikh said. But while she is organizing the student’s strike and advocating for their editorial autonomy, she’s mourning something, too.
After two years on the Mercury’s staff, she says joining the newspaper represented a shift in her college experience.
“With Gregorio's removal, it was made apparent to me that the Mercury's lifespan was limited,” Shaikh said. “[The Mercury] gave me a real sense of purpose and direction and a real grounding in what my place was here at college. I moved here from the Midwest, and I left a lot of things behind and finding my footing here has been a bit difficult for me. … Going from feeling so excited about the semester to realizing that it's all over, basically, in the span of one Friday night meeting, it was really difficult.”
