JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech junior Sara Mitchell, editor-in-chief of the Collegiate Times, works with colleagues in the campus newspaper's office space at Squires Student Center.

Virginia Tech will not pull funding for the publisher of the campus newspaper, nor will it ban student organizations from buying ads with university funds, as a Tech advisory group had proposed, officials announced Friday.

"This is a student issue. These are students raising this issue with their fellow students" and not an administrative initiative, university spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Any effort to end Tech's contract with the Collegiate Times or its parent company, or to ban student organizations from advertising in the newspaper, "is not in the offing," Hincker said. "That is not the position of this administration."

Kelly Wolff of Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, the parent company of the CT, lauded the announcement.

"This is the right decision and we appreciate that the administration has voiced it so quickly," Wolff wrote in an e-mail. "It is completely consistent with Virginia Tech's previous history of support for the right of students to control editorial content in student media, which has been laudable among universities."

The announcement came after a growing controversy over freedom of speech and freedom of the press touched off Thursday by a dispute between Tech's Commission on Student Affairs and the campus newspaper.

By Friday afternoon, both the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education had rushed to the defense of the newspaper.

The commission, an advisory group made up of students, faculty and staff, had objected to a CT editorial policy that allows anonymous reader comments to be posted to collegiatetimes.com. Some of the commission members had characterized some of the comments as homophobic, racist or otherwise offensive and demanded the CT take action to stop them. Ongoing discussions between the groups about the policy had broken down last week.

In a letter sent Monday to Wolff, commission Chairwoman Michelle McLeese wrote that if the CT did not return to the bargaining table, the commission would recommend the university pull its funding for the company and ban student organizations from using university funds to advertise in the newspaper.

In response, Wolff declined to participate in future meetings and said EMCVT would sue if the university pursued the recommendations.

Wolff further warned that funding cuts could jeopardize the financial stability of the student yearbook and literary magazine, as well as the campus radio and television stations, all of which EMCVT oversees and operates.

Policies governing third-party comments on newspaper and television news Web sites vary widely, and there are few set standards to govern what is a relatively new and experimental medium for journalism.

To comment on news stories or opinion pieces, readers of the CT must register with a name and verifiable e-mail address. In so doing, the reader agrees to abide by CT standards, including avoiding threatening or libelous statements and personal attacks.

Readers who find comments questionable may flag them for review by CT staff. Staff members then determine whether or not the comments should be deleted, Wolff said.

Roanoke media outlets, including The Roanoke Times, all allow anonymous comments to some degree and employ various screening systems for questionable content.

Viewers of WDBJ (Channel 7) may post comments on most, but not all, news stories without registration or verification of identity. If other readers flag posts as offensive or questionable, they can be removed, said Kelly Zuber, WDBJ's director of digital media.

WSLS (Channel 10) allows comments on every news story, but visitors must register with the Web site and verify an e-mail address before they can post comments, according to Warren Fiihr, vice president and general manager of WSLS.

The Roanoke Times Web site, roanoke.com, has two different systems of comment participation -- one each for discussion forums and blogs.

To participate in discussion forums, a visitor must provide a name and an e-mail that can then be verified. Commenting on a roanoke.com blog does not require registration or verification of an e-mail, but comments are moderated by individual bloggers.

Roanoke.com does not allow direct comments on stories.