At 6:30 PM, Bashar Hanna, Michelle Kiec, and Dan Knorr walk through the office doors. The power imbalance of a room full of students facing a three-campus president and his two lieutenants dominates the atmosphere. The front page of the next edition’s headline lights up my computer screen in my cubicle. The bold headline reads “Union votes no-confidence in CU president”. Internally, I’m praying they don’t ask for a tour.

The unexpected visit came after The Voice published an editorial calling for Hanna to step down. This piece was the culmination of months of reporting on the concerns of Hanna’s presidency. The lawsuit over his administration’s wrongful termination of a dean seeking to report an alleged sexual harassment complaint against him. The university reserves being used to pay for the $4M verdict. The $28M deficit CU is experiencing. The editorial gained attention from the Philadelphia Inquirer and Forbes, putting The Voice in the spotlight.

His unprompted visit left a sour taste in our mouths.

A taste that, while not inhibiting me from publishing stories about the trial and deficit, made me hesitant just enough not to publish this until now. The decision to discuss what occurred on Feb. 24 was a hard one. I considered letting it go. I was afraid of putting our newsroom in a position for the administration to paint us as ungrateful kids, reading too much into an interaction. For the first time in my whole career at The Voice, I was nervous about publishing the news.

Prior to their arrival, tension had built for more than an hour. Someone from catering had placed a bin of napkins, plates, and drinks on the work table. Boxes of pizza soon followed. Then, the familiar ding of Outlook. What at first seemed like a joke about the president’s office sending us pizza, in a moment, became a sudden reality. It was Hanna. He was on his way.

My next step included several frantic messages and phone calls to our faculty advisor, John-Erik Koslosky. Koslosky is typically at every meeting we hold. But on that night, car troubles prevented him from joining.

“Document everything,” is the only order I give before our staff quickly snaps into action. Photographers pick up their cameras and station themselves around the office. Reporters grab their notebooks and pens. I grab my phone and hit record, capturing the audio of the evening. Enter Hanna, Kiec, and Knorr.

Hanna acknowledges the intrusion with a laugh. He jokes that pizza can’t be considered a gift if he joins us for a slice. We laugh when he laughs. We speak when spoken to. No one makes a move to open the pizza boxes on the table. Each word of his cuts through the air, thick and suffocating. Hanna launches into a speech he gave to me and two other editors in an interview earlier that week. Word for word. A speech about his humble upbringing and experience with the financial demands of higher education.

Right behind where he is sitting, there is an old edition pinned to the board. It’s the first article The Voice covered about his lawsuit at the beginning of the legal battle. I stare at the two presidents: the one captured in ink on the wall and the one sitting before me.

I knew that our experience wasn’t the first of its kind. In September of last year, Penn State University’s student paper, The Daily Collegian, experienced three dozen of their newspaper racks being taken down by the university. In the same month, The Mercury, the University of Texas at Dallas’s publication, had their editor-in-chief dismissed for covering pro-Palestinian protests. Bloomsburg University has also experienced a history of administration interference in the student press. In 2018, The Voice published its first article about Hanna’s involvement in a wrongful termination suit. The Voice was met with newspaper stacks disappearing across campus, allegedly in the spots where campus tours frequent.

Despite my hesitations, I recognize that The Voice has a 101-year history as a publication. We have a duty to uphold the legacy that previous staffers have established before us. A legacy of integrity and independence. We have a responsibility to those who will come after us, to report the happenings of today, even if it means we become characters in the story.

​​The Voice does recognize that Hanna has made an effort to be available to us in recent months. He and his team have responded to our every email and have scheduled monthly interviews with us. Despite these efforts, the deliberate choice to intrude on our newsroom meeting- a time when we discuss stories about him- will forever stain our view of this administration. The Voice will not be bullied. The Voice will not be bribed. Our work will not be anything less than independent of the administration. Our commitment will forever be to the student body whom we work for. The Voice will continue to be your campus, your news, your voice.