Last Thursday, The Hatchet received a series of reports of individuals taking entire stacks of issues of the paper and moving them to either the nearest recycling container or to unknown locations. We find these actions distressing, and want to remind those individuals that taking entire stacks of papers is stealing from both the community and from our institution.

Stealing entire stacks of Hatchets with the intention of preventing other students from reading them is just that – stealing. Every Monday and Thursday, we try to provide students, faculty and administrators with news and other information both online and in print. But when people across campus can’t pick up a hard copy of The Hatchet because the papers are missing, those individuals who moved the papers have essentially stolen from the community.

In addition to hurting our readers, this move also hurt our institution in a number of ways. Advertisers who spend a great deal of time and money working with our business staff lost money when readers were not able to see the advertisements those businesses paid for. Thursday’s issue cost an estimated $3,500 in advertisements, and yet the majority of those ads never reached the eyes of their intended market.

Similarly, The Hatchet as a business lost money when the product we paid to print did not reach its intended customers. The latest issue cost $1,500 to print, not including stipends for staff and employees. We lost a great deal of money when people could not find or read our product, and so we take this as a personal attack on our institution.

We encourage any student with information about these incidents or about the individuals involved to go to the University Police Department, and you can submit tips anonymously if you prefer.

Readers can visit the Forum to comment on this editorial.