B.C. Newspaper Renews Lease

The Heights, a Boston College student newspaper, last week signed a lease with the college that will allow the newspaper to remain on campus, despite a recent dispute with the school's Jesuit trustees over advertisements for abortions that appeared in the paper.

The lease for on-campus office space requires the newspaper not to run "ads for services which may reasonably be interpreted as abortion."

Paul McPartland, editor-in-chief of The Heights, said yesterday the 14-person editorial board of the student paper voted last week to renew the lease, adding, "we were bitter--we feel that we were right."

The college had threatened not to renew the lease because of the ads, which administrators considered inappropriate for a Catholic student body.

If The Heights had not agreed to the provisions of the new lease, the paper would have been forced to move off-campus or operate from student apartments, McPartland said. He added that once before, in 1971, the paper had moved off campus, "and in less than a year it was dead."

Before signing the new lease, the staff of The Heights circulated for five days a petition to allow the newspaper to remain on campus, and collected about 4000 students and faculty signatures. "We kind of tapered off in the last day or so--nobody really wanted to get involved in an issue like this," he added.

Kevin P. Duffy, B.C. vice-president for student affairs, who represented the college in the lease agreement, could not be reached for comment yesterday