The Kingsman and Campus News
Geri Stevens
— They immediately created Kingsman, you know, a puppet newspaper with kids who were not exactly seasoned journalists and they took over our office. And I think it happened in a matter of days. They just took away our charter.
Herb Dorfman
— I think it was just well understood that this was going to be a newspaper that would operate with the cooperation of the administration. And all the people who were on it were — not all of the people, but the people in charge of it — were people who were known to be in sympathy with the administration.
Bill Taylor
— And we then, as a group, went on to publish our newspaper off-campus, something called the Campus News. I think we published six issues into December of 1950. I don't remember what offices we used to dummy up the newspaper and so on. It was off-campus some place. Maybe somebody's home. And as I recall — and, you know, memory falters a little bit — we didn't use any names in the newspaper because we knew there would be consequences if we did.
Herb Dorfman
— Kingsman was daunted from the beginning. I mean, they came in as a successor to Vanguard and there was no way they were going to screw around. And so that meant very bland, very inoffensive journalism, and that's what it was. I suspect that Gideonse had whoever the faculty advisor was submit the copy to him so he could read it.
Bill Taylor
— “We feel that" — this is from the first editorial in the Campus News — "We feel that The Kingsman, the faculty-chartered newspaper, is frightened by a single power, the Brooklyn College administration, which it will not and cannot question. Written by students, read by students, paid for by students, the Kingsman was founded by an illegitimate faculty committee and blessed by a counterfeit liberal. We on Campus News hope to publish a newspaper which will be restricted only by incorruptible facts…."
Herb Dorfman
— At the time there was no place where we could get our story told except through "Campus News," and that's why we did it. We got it done. We got it done under strange circumstances and we got it into the hands of students. We wanted to say what had happened to the Vanguard, and we wanted to say, you know, “We are the legitimate student newspaper,” and here's what happened and so on.
Ann Lane
— I don't even remember how long it lasted. It was a few weeks or something; maybe a couple of months. We couldn't hold it together. It was done out of my parents' living room. I remember the first meeting we had there, we had a mimeograph machine and we turned it out. But it was hopeless.
Geri Stevens
— I think, one issue of something. We had some money left over. We couldn't collect student activity fees. We were not given any money any more, so we published one issue, I think the week after we were suspended. And then we were told we couldn't do that. So then we started collecting money sub rosa from kids and from faculty. The faculty was remarkably cooperative. I remember my psych Professor gave us money, and he'd sometimes say "stay after class” and he'd hand me a dollar or five, whatever it was. And that went for about six weeks and then we ran out of money. Then we just couldn't do it any more. And that was it.
Bill Taylor
— We were doing it all on student contributions — voluntary student contributions — and we ran out of money and so we terminated publication in December.
Herb Dorfman
— They never thought we were smart enough to run the paper while it was alive and they were shocked that we were smart enough to run an independent paper and distribute it to the student body. And gee, it was better than the one that took over. That was the challenge. When I think back on it, it really was amazing. You know? It's one thing to be working in the school and you have the facilities. We were working in somebody's basement taking turns at the typewriter.
Ann Lane
— I don't think we were scared. I mean, we were defiant. What were they going to do to us, I mean, tell us we couldn't go to school? So big deal. I mean, it was not — we weren't going to go to jail.