CSU students start rival paper

DENVER — The backlash from a profane headline-sized editorial in Colorado State University”s student newspaper now includes a conservative campus publication.

The campus College Republicans published today the first issue of the Ram Republic, a journal of conservative thoughts and opinions aimed at providing students with an alternative to the more liberal daily newspaper.

The Rocky Mountain Collegian made national headlines last month when student editor J. David McSwane used a four-letter word to attack President Bush in a headline-sized editorial.

A university panel admonished him last week, but allowed him to keep his job as editor.

For campus conservatives, that was the last straw. Plans for an alternative publication, already in the works, accelerated as disgust grew with the Collegian”s unapologetic defense of the Sept. 21 editorial.

“We started planning this a few weeks prior to this whole incident because we’re sick and tired of the same left-wing opinion in the Collegian,” College Republicans Chairwoman Chelsea Penoyer said.

After the Collegian editorial ran, “We started getting all these writers who wanted to write for us instead of the Collegian,” she said.

Bobby Carson, the Ram Republic’s editor in chief, said the staff plans to publish every month during the school year. Hundreds of copies of the first edition will be distributed today on campus and throughout the university”s hometown of Fort Collins, Colo.

“There’s no outlet for conservative views on this campus at all,” said Mr. Carson, a senior political-science major. “We’re just tired of it. We don”t want people to feel alienated because they’re conservatives on campus.”

Campus liberals already are paying attention. In a Friday editorial, the Collegian took a dig at the fledgling publication.

“And to the CSU College Republicans — we would like to congratulate you on your decision to start a competing paper,” said the editorial. “Good luck. We’re sure Fox News will be very kind to you when you alienate the liberal college population.”

The Collegian could lose $50,000 in advertising revenue from local business owners who threatened to pull their ads after the profane editorial ran. The newspaper already has been forced to cut staff salaries by 10 percent and print in black-and-white instead of color.

The Ram Republic’s first issue includes an article about the profanity controversy, as well as opinion pieces by a couple of Republican guest editorialists, former Rep. Bob Beauprez and Colorado state Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg.