Why printing The Vista is so vital

By Amy Hall

Forty-five years ago this September, the Central State University administration sought to control the student newspaper, The Vista, through various tactics, verbal threats and intimidation. It forced my father, Dennie Hall, to resign as The Vista adviser. His reason: The administration’s quest for control was a “code word for censorship.” I remember my father telling me that then President Bill Lillard said to Dr. Ray Tassin, then Chairman of the Department of Journalism, “If you don’t make him (Dennie Hall) silence the student journalists working for The Vista, I will!”

The Vista is an institution that has served the university for 122 years, longer than any other student publication. My father, a longtime, tenured and beloved UCO faculty member, fought to protect the First Amendment until he died in 2020.

That included the rights of student journalists to serve as watchdogs of government, which includes a university’s administration.

I recently sat in a meeting in which UCO’s Student Media Advisory Board was intimidated into approving a budget without the printing costs. The administration threatened loss of funding and regents’ mandates about “more efficient use of our resources.”

Then they claimed the department and its faculty made the decision. I personally know many of the journalism staff and faculty at UCO. They taught with my father, and I was present at many university and non-university gatherings with them. I don’t know a single member of the faculty that taught alongside my father that would have made that decision.

They then claimed it was about moving toward a digital future where print newspapers are no longer needed. That’s laughable when considering 155 Oklahoma newspapers, including in many of the regents’ hometowns, and 17,000 news organizations worldwide still print at least weekly. The board had to make the difficult decision to approve the budget without printing so students working for The Vista would be paid during the 20252026 school year.

The administration didn’t just say they didn’t have the money to print The Vista, they said it wouldn’t be printed even if there was funding from other sources, i.e. The Dennie Hall Endowment Fund. Today, by banning printing of The Vista , the University of Central Oklahoma administration is in clear violation of the Freedom of the Press guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The Vista’s print version is and will be a useful learning tool for aspiring journalists as it was 45 years ago. It continues that way despite UCO seemingly abandoning journalism, too.

On UCO’s “Mass Communication” web pages, UCO still has a journalism minor and an endowed chair for journalism ethics funded by a grant. That’s about it. When my father was teaching, the department had a powerful journalism department led by Dr. Ray Tassin in which The Vista was a centerpiece and had 900 students with two baccalaureate and two master’s degrees. It was fostered up until Dr. Terry Clark left as department chair in 2009.

This points to administrative neglect and reckless decisions that affect the futures of many Oklahomans. What was once a proud program was cut so much that it no longer has a full-time The

Vista adviser, no longer has summer editions, and fails to publish a story the first two weeks of this semester.

It especially points to a current president who spends tens of thousands of dollars on a new mascot named Buck and a rebranding campaign with a theme of “Where the Movement Is” while his administration rejects donations for the $12,000 to print one year of The Vista.

Students, faculty and the rest of us receive flashy public relations newsletters and selfies of a president working out more than spending time supporting students’ First Amendment rights as past presidents Don Betz, Roger Webb and former Gov. George Nigh did. This current administration is more about flash than substance. Thus, the only reason they offered to allow donors’ funding for The Vista student journalists is to publish a print propaganda magazine instead of a print weekly newspaper.

Don’t let anyone fool you: It’s about administration control of the message, that code word for censorship. It was that way 45 years ago when my father stood up to them. This time, however, what’s at stake is the very existence of a student newspaper, protected by the free

speech and press clauses in the First Amendment.

The history of journalism, which UCO also fails to teach, shows us that these types of tactics eventually will backfire. It did in 1980. They should in 2025, too.

Amy Hall is one of the top account managers at one of the largest commercial printing and direct mail companies in Oklahoma. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and a minor in history. She started her career as a proofreader at Ackerman McQueen in 1999 and worked her way up to broadcast creative service manager before moving on to further her career. Today, she is her company’s political mail specialist, the head of software and development and even a proofreader for the companies various marketing strategies.

Her father, Dennie Hall, helped establish the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame under Dr. Ray Tassin and was director until his retirement in 1997. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists, among many other awards and accolades.