A newspaper's staff should always question what purpose it serves to the greater community.

This week, The Reporter, a student newspaper from Stetson University in Florida, was shut down after a highly offensive April Fool's Day issue was published. The issue included racist jokes and a sex column promoting rape and domestic violence.

The paper has a long-running tradition of poking fun in their April Fools' Day issue and has been under recent pressure to tone down the content. Since Stetson is a private institution, it can restrict what the student newspaper publishes, so this is not a First Amendment issue as it would be at MSU.

What a shame. This was an award-winning paper, ranked second-best in the state and the staff at The Reporter threw it all away. How could the paper ever have been comfortable with what they published?

The writers and editors failed to ask themselves what good their issue would bring to readers. We don't feel it served any purpose because jokes dealing with rape, racism and domestic violence are never, under any circumstances, funny. Even though the intent was to be satirical, they went overboard with jokes such as these.

We're all for freedom of speech. But free speech isn't free - it comes with a price. And the paper's staff learned that the hard way.

The school obviously gave the paper a lot of freedom before, seeing as the issue went to print in the first place. The paper's staff earned Stetson's respect and has now promptly lost it.

Unfortunately for The Reporter staff, it was functioning out of a private institution and had to expect to answer to the administration. But even if it was an independent publication its actions might have been legal but no less tasteless.

Editor-in-chief Teresa Schwarz said, "We've learned a lot in the last week as students and journalists."

Unfortunately, due to their previous recklessness, it will be a long time before they can put these new lessons to use.