Student staff from The Maneater, MU’s student newspaper, said more than 1,500 copies of the newspaper were stolen from at least eight campus locations Tuesday.
Jenna Youngs, editor in chief of the publication, said the papers were stolen between 2 and 3 p.m. She said she didn’t know who stole the papers. Youngs said, however, there were two “controversial stories” in the issue — one about a lawsuit against the former president of a fraternity and another about the vice president-elect of the Missouri Students Association. The second story was accompanied by a photo from the 19-year-old student leader’s Facebook profile in which she is duct-taped to a chair and is being given a drink of beer.
“It is really disappointing that somebody would do this to our paper, it is an obvious infringement of our free speech,” Youngs said.
About 9,000 copies of The Maneater are published each Tuesday and Friday throughout the school year. Youngs said that each paper costs 15 cents to print. She estimated the total cost of the stolen papers to be more than $200. Youngs said that they reported the stolen papers to MU Police Department on Tuesday afternoon.
MU police Capt. Brian Weimer said if a student takes more than one copy of the paper it is considered theft.
“With any theft report, when there are potential suspects or potential leads we’ll look into them,” he said.
MU student Tara Leitner, a Missourian copy editor, said she saw “three kids carrying three stacks of The Maneater out of Middlebush around 2 o’clock.” Leitner said the people she saw were men.