900 Copies of Dissident Student Newspaper Stolen

More than 900 copies of a dissident student newspaper that had raised issues such as materialism, militarism, homosexuality and race were reported stolen Wednesday from a dormitory room on the campus of Southern California College, Costa Mesa police said.

Marshall Flowers, dean of students at the four-year liberal arts institution, called the theft of the photocopied publication an “outright injustice” and said that administrators at the fundamentalist school will investigate the incident “as we would any other.”

Larry Haynes, editor of the Unexpected News and a senior, said the theft of the papers was the latest in a series of difficulties faced by the publication. A theft report was filed with the Costa Mesa police Wednesday afternoon.

Southern California College is a Pentecostal school affiliated with the Assemblies of God church, which maintains a district headquarters on the campus. The 950 students enrolled--who pay just under $7,000 a year for tuition, room and board--are asked to sign a pledge to refrain from smoking, drinking, gambling, dancing and sexual activity.

Haynes, 21, a former biblical studies major from Riverside, said he had been called in on one occasion by the school’s president, Wayne Kraiss, to discuss articles he had written on materialism and the church. Haynes also said that distribution of the paper through the campus mail system had been restricted. The paper, which comes out occasionally, has had three editions so far.

However, Flowers said those discussions with the college president, who is out of town, represented a “reasoning together” that was a “model of our whole discipline process.”

Distribution of the paper, he said, is governed by the policy covering unchartered campus organizations. “We’re a very open campus,” Flowers said.