The Exponent

The January 20, 2006 front page of The Exponent
Type	Daily independent student newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Purdue Student Publishing Foundation
Publisher	Pat Kuhnle
Editor	George Landsly
Founded	1889
Headquarters	460 Northwestern Avenue West Lafayette, IN 47906 United States
Website	http://www.purdueexponent.org/

The Purdue Exponent is one of a handful of independent student newspapers, with most other college newspapers being owned by the university or operated by the journalism school. The college newspaper serves Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. It is published on Mondays and Thursdays during university semesters by the Purdue Student Publishing Foundation, and is Indiana's largest collegiate daily newspaper.

The Exponent employs seven full-time professionals, relying for most operations on a staff of approximately 140 students, though the university has no journalism school.

The Exponent's first edition was published on December 15, 1889. It was a daily paper from 1906-2016. In 2017, it switched to a twice-weekly printing schedule. The Web edition (www.purdueexponent.org) was started in 1996. It is the first college newspaper in the country to build its own building (1989), and one of six college newspapers with its own press.

The path to becoming an independent entity began in 1968, when the university removed William R. Smoot II as editor-in-chief. The move followed critical and controversial columns in the newspaper, particularly one on October 23, 1968 that castigated university president Frederick L. Hovde.

The university informed Smoot on Friday, Nov. 8, 1968 that he was being removed, but the sixteen editors on the staff refused to accept the dictum. On Saturday, it put out a special edition with a headline, “We Will Still Publish.” By Monday, the headline was more defiant: “Smoot Will Continue: Staff”.

University officials claimed that alumni and political pressure had nothing to do with the move to remove Smoot, but Thomas Graham, a Purdue trustee later said, “Not only did I get a whole bunch of letters, I’d go down to cash a check at the bank and an old friend would grab (me) by the front of the shirt and tell (me), ‘Now dammit, you know right from wrong. Now go up there and get those liberals out of that university.’ … That’s how it’s done here in southern Indiana.”

The firing of the editor pushed to the fore the issue of who owned and who was responsible for oversight of the student newspaper. The issue was given to a faculty-student-administrator committee called the Exponent Review Board, but known as the Osmun Commission for its chairman, Dr. John Osmun. Ultimately the Osmun Commission decided over the opposition of administration members that while Hovde had the authority to fire Smoot, the university did not follow due process. Smoot was allowed to remain as editor-in-chief.