Censorship always is a hot issue on college campuses, and recent events have made it even more so at the University of Missouri-Colombia, where nearly 6,000 copies of the student newspaper, the Maneater, were stolen Tuesday morning.

“When we believe students to be censoring things, it’s just so against everything I’ve been taught,” said Paul Wilson, editor in chief of the Maneater. “For this to happen in a place of enlightenment is so disturbing.”

Tuesday morning, Wilson said, two students were seen stealing about 200 newspapers from the bins outside the Maneater office. By the time the damage was totaled, an estimated 6,000 newspapers were stolen.

“Anywhere in central campus, our papers are gone,” he said. “We have hardly enough newspapers left to send to advertisers as proof of their purchase.”

However, Wilson said he can’t be sure that all of those papers were stolen.

“The papers had been out since Friday, so many papers could have been taken at any time,” he said.

Wilson believes the robbery stems from a controversial article written about an African-American student leader.

On Sept. 3, the Maneater published an article on Damon White, a former student at the university who has been missing for six months.

Based on interviews with family members, the Maneater article reported that White, former president of the Legion of Black Collegians as well as the Iota Phi Theta fraternity, was homosexual and HIV positive.

“There were leaks and some of the students thought that the story would be negative,” Wilson said.

The article refers to White’s ex-boyfriend as “John Doe,” saying “Doe accused Damon of giving him HIV.”

According to the article, White’s family believes that Doe is responsible for the disappearance, but they have received little help or interest from local police.

Wilson said some students were upset by the story.

“It’s disappointing that an article that did not criticize would be reacted to in this way,” he said.

Wilson said editors at the Maneater aren’t sure who is responsible for the stolen newspapers.

Wilson said he understood the possible reasoning behind the heist, but he couldn’t agree with the actions.

“If you don’t like the article, this is passive resistance. It’s better than putting a rock through the window, but at the same time it’s censorship. The ideal of censorship goes against everything I thought college was about,” he said.

Wilson said he has his own suspicions about the culprit but declined to give any names due to lack of evidence.

Wilson said the theft has been reported to the police, but he has little hope that the thief will be found.

“We have filed a police report. I don’t really think it’s going to do much. The police aren’t going to investigate the theft of several thousand newspapers,” he said.

Wilson said about $1,500 worth of newspapers was stolen.

“There are a lot of things that I wish had been different in the last week. The biggest feeling I have is regret that we, the entire paper, weren’t a little more cautious,” he said.

Though Wilson expressed regret that the story was leaked, he said he does not think the Maneater did anything wrong in printing the story.

“This won’t change anything that we did, and I don’t regret writing what I wrote,” he said. “It was a touchy story, but it wasn’t something that we shouldn’t have done.”