CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - A student newspaper at a Christian college in Dayton planned to write a story about a Biblical studies professor who resigned after being arrested on attempted child molestation charges, but the story was spiked by the college president.
So Alex Green, the 22-year-old editor of the student newspaper at Bryan College, instead posted fliers around campus about the arrest of David Morgan, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.
Morgan resigned this summer after he was arrested by officers in an FBI sting and accused of meeting two underage girls at a gas station in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga.
Morgan was also the assistant director of the Bryan Institute for Critical Thought and Practice. The college is named after William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor in the 1925 trial held in Dayton of John Thomas Scopes, who was convicted for teaching evolution.
"Bryan College is not Penn State," Green wrote in the flier. "Because there are people here that will not attempt to save face by dusting over the arrest of Dr. David Morgan."
Green declined to talk to the newspaper about his actions.
On Tuesday, Bryan College President Stephen Livesay held a meeting with staff and faculty to explain that he didn't allow the story to be printed because it was inappropriate.
A spokesman for the college, Tom Davis, said Livesay and the school's cabinet said they felt the story should not be published because they could not verify the facts.
"They are looking at this as: We are an institution that says it's a Christian institution and we're trying to live that out, to not spread information we can't confirm," Davis said.
The original story, which has been posted online, cites an FBI press release and arrest reports provided by the Catoosa County Sheriff's Office.
The student newspaper, called the Triangle, is a classroom-run paper that publishes weekly online and monthly in print. Davis said Livesay does not normally read stories before they are printed and said he knows of only one other time in his 21 years at the school in which the college administrators stopped a story from being printed.
Davis said Green has not been disciplined.
