Racks with hundreds of Ethos magazines have been emptied following the week of them hitting campus. Speculations have been made, but no one is sure as to who is behind the act.

“Huge stacks of them, full boxes of them were disappearing within minutes, which I would love to say is what usually happens, but it’s not, that’s not what usually happens, they don’t get picked up that fast,” said Devon O’Brien, editor-in-chief of Ethos.

Nguyet Bui, co-creative director for Ethos, was witness to some of the magazines disappearance. “Another editor and I went out to go check out some buildings, and I was in the building, Gerdin, when I saw two girls have stacks of the Ethos magazines, that I just saw, and as I was leaving, I just saw them take them.”

Bui said she also heard the girls say, “Let’s grab these, and then we’ll go.” Bui was not the only witness to the magazine’s being stolen, though another witness, who spoke to Ethos about what they saw, has chosen not to comment.

O’Brien said that the magazines were put out on the evening of Wednesday, April 24, 2013, and by the afternoon of Thursday, April 25, they were being thrown away. She speculated that the magazines were getting thrown out because people do not always agree with its content.

“This is probably not the best on our part — it was just coincidental, that the magazine came out the day before Take Back the Night, which is an event for sexual assault awareness,” O’Brien said.

“We are assuming, and I don’t want to make any claims, but we are assuming that that is the reason that people are a little offended by the content of the magazine, because there is a story about Bubu Palo in it — it was our cover story.”

The story that O’Brien said she believes sparked the controversy was written by Abby Gilman and focused on Palo’s path to returning to the basketball court.

Gilman said she believes that magazine theft has to do with her article and Palo appearing on the cover, “just because people have strong opinions about him.”

“I mean, obviously he was in the media a lot this year, like with the whole sexual assault case and how the charges were dismissed,” Gilman said. “So I feel like people have a strong opinion on him whether or not they read the article.”

Gilman said that with Palo as a public figure, the story was supposed to be a personality profile on who he is and was not supposed to focus on “that night,” even though she said it is a big part of who he is today.

“I believe I was very unbiased, and I just told the facts of his life, and when I got to that night, I just told the facts of everything that the court documents and everything said,” Gilman said.

The article in question does not contain any information from, or about, the woman who filed the sexual assault charges against Palo. O’Brien and Gilman both said this is because the name was not released to the media.

“Her name wasn’t released to the press. In every article I read, in all of my research before talking to anyone about the story, I couldn’t find her name,” Gilman said. “If she does want to contact us, and let us write a story on her, that would be interesting as well.”

Dennis Chamberlin, faculty adviser to Ethos, said there was more that could have been done to find the woman who filed the charges.

“They didn’t know that you could go and get court records to find stuff like that because if they would have actually done some digging, probably in Nevada at the courthouse, they might have been able to find more information.”

At this point Chamberlin said they are working to find out what happened to the magazines.

“They’re planning on pursuing it,” he said. “The police refused to get involved, even though there have been several successful prosecutions for newspaper theft and magazine theft on campuses across the country.”

Ethos has even done work to figure out how much money making the publication takes, and how much is being thrown away.

Dan Rediske, financial director for the Government of the Student Body, said that for the 2012-2103 school year, Ethos was allocated $19,128.

“I think it takes about $5,500 or $6,000 to print 2,000 copies,” Gilman said. “I think we all estimate that well over 1,000 [copies] were thrown out or taken off campus, off the stands and done whatever with, so that’s probably about $2,500 at least.”

Finances may be a problem for Ethos next year as they missed the deadline to request funding from the Government of the Student Body. “They did not make a budget request,” Rediske said.

This is not the first time Ethos has seen its magazines being thrown away.

Last year, following the release of their “Sex and Love” publication, those offended threw away stacks of the magazine.

“A year ago, there were people that were offended by sex on the cover of the magazine. Or a sex illustration,” Chamberlin said. “And some people took offense at that; they tended to be socially conservative.”

At this point, Ethos has sent an email to GSB to let them know the money they were allocated was “thrown down the drain and went into the trashcan,” Chamberlin said. “They’re also planning to talk, to notify, student affairs.”