After student newspaper The Mercury published unflattering coverage about University of Texas at Dallas’s response to pro-Palestinian encampments, university officials demoted the newspaper’s advisor and even removed copies of the paper from newsstands. Tensions came to a head when administrators ousted The Mercury’s editor-in-chief without following proper procedures.
In response, The Mercury’s staff went on strike, and ÃÛÖÏãÌÒ’s Student Press Freedom Initiative and the Student Press Law Center joined forces to call on UT Dallas to honor student journalists’ rights and to pay them what they are owed for work they did before the strike. UT Dallas ignored our letter.
Despite the setbacks they experienced in 2024, the student journalists of The Mercury have started a new independent newspaper —&²Ô²ú²õ±è;The Retrograde, which receives no funds from the school. In fact, they managed to crowdfund for their own equipment, spaces, website, and everything else necessary to provide quality journalism to the UT Dallas community.
Now they need your help.
UT Dallas still has not compensated The Mercury’s staff for time they worked prior to the strike, the administration has offered no support whatsoever to The Retrograde, and the university has made no efforts to come to an agreement with the paper’s staff.
Send an email to UT Dallas President Richard Benson today! Remind him that UT Dallas is a public institution that must abide by the First Amendment requirement that the university defend all press, even when Benson’s administration disagrees with the content.
