The Corp has taken to running the 1st floor of the Leavey Center like its personal fiefdom, with all the restrictions of free speech that entails. Thursday night I noticed several fliers on the bulletin boards near Vital Vittles and the Leavey elevators with this article (link currently down) from the Columbia Spectator about Collegeboxes’ failure to return stored items on time to Columbia students. Later that night, they were gone.

Expecting the hidden hand of the Corp’s Student Storage behind the fliers and Collegeboxes behind the takedown, I emailed Corp CEO Jesse Scharff. His response was surprising: the Corp didn’t put the fliers up, but they took them down because they thought it reflected poorly on them. If someone wants to tell students about Collegeboxes’ seemingly significant problems, the Corp shouldn’t stop them just because it might reflect poorly on them.

After the jump, Scharff’s email and a conspiracy theory I’ve been working on.

Emphasis mine

In short, these fliers were not endorsed by the Corp. Our marketing department does not support negative ad campaigns. After receiving word about complaints that the Corp had put these up, a few members of our management took down some of the fliers they found, leading some to believe that the Corp had put them up in the first place (which, again, was not the case).

Obvious alternate reality version of this story: the Corp did put up the fliers, but after receiving complaints disavowed them and took them down.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Campus News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.