Administrators at Cedarville University in Ohio stopped distribution of the school's newspaper, The Ventriloquist, after the paper published a first-hand account of a gay student.
The narrative was written by Avery Redic, a former Cedarville student who was removed from student leadership positions at the university because of his sexuality. In the op-ed, Redic writes that after coming out as gay, he was told by administrators that his sexuality was "spiritual instability."
"[Student Life President John Wood] said he was not comfortable having a gay student in a positions of leadership, and so the article was just Avery's basically first-person account of what happened with that, and I have to imagine the administration wasn't especially fond of that,"said Ventriloquist writer Zach Schneider. "The move to confiscate it happened so quickly that I would be pretty surprised if they actually read it before they confiscated it."
University President Dr. Thomas White responded by saying that the school (which has a Baptist affiliation) did not shut anything down, but instead "prevented unauthorized solicitation."
An article posted on the newspaper's website suggests that "the move to shut down The Ventriloquist is likely the latest in a series of shifts towards right-wing religious fundamentalism by the new administration."