A Tulsa attorney, on behalf of former and current UCO students, sent a letter to UCO faculty and staff members, including President Todd Lamb, alleging the University has violated their First Amendment rights by ending The Vista’s 122-year-old print publication and interfering with its editorial independence.
The letter, sent Oct. 7, came from Leslie Briggs, Oklahoma staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It says the letter was issued in response to a “series of actions the University has taken to hinder The Vista’s editorial independence,” including the decision to end print entirely at the start of the fall 2025 semester.
According to the letter, The Vista’s Student Media Advisory Board – made up of faculty in the Mass Communications Department – voted in May to approve a budget that included biweekly printing. Internal emails show that despite the board’s vote, the administration later told members that UCO would no longer provide funding for print and would publish only on university servers. The letter states that private donors offered to provide the full amount for The Vista’s print budget, which amounted to $12,000 per semester, but “In July 2025, Dean Elizabeth Maier wrote to Board Chair Joe Hight stating, ‘printing the paper in its current form will not be permitted,’ even with the use of privately donated funds,” the letter says.
Hight, whose emails with Maier are presented as evidence in the letter, expressed concern about a sudden switch to digital.
In a July 21 email, he states “I have been involved in many digital strategy efforts and never have witnessed one that was created immediately.”
The Vista is now digital only, with posts on ucentralmedia.com and on social media sites such as Instagram.
The letter describes what it calls “conflicts between the University and The Vista.” This includes claims the president’s office required all questions to be submitted before interviews, and repeated complaints from his office about negative press coverage. It alleges that Lamb took additional issue with stories such as “efforts to install Narcan vending machines on campus, the University’s handling of a student dying by suicide in late 2024, and the UCO Student Association’s failed vote of confidence in Lamb immediately prior to his official inauguration in April 2024.” The letter further claims that students who spoke out against the University’s decision to end the print publication “have been subjected to retaliation, including demotions – or outright loss of positions – on The Vista.”
The letter calls on the University to “restore The Vista’s longstanding editorial independence; allow printing and distribution of The Vista in paper form to resume; and cease all retaliation against The Vista and any students or faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Briggs said her office sent the letter under both the First Amendment and Oklahoma’s Campus Free Speech statute, which requires public universities to protect student press rights. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where Briggs works, provides free legal support to journalists and newsrooms across the country.
Many of the students who signed the letter now write for The Independent View, the student-run publication created after The Vista’s print edition was shut down.
