The Technician has been running for nearly 100 years, with the first issue published on Feb. 1, 1920. Throughout the years, NC State has seen many different events, from great successes to terrible tragedies and everything in between. Time, and language itself, has changed over the years but for almost every major event, Technician was there.
It’s no secret that the both candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election have had numerous scandals. These scandals have been topics during both of the first two presidential debates, covered on all major news outlets and they are on every voter’s mind. But, whoever wins, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, neither will be the first president to have a scandal and, for two of the major ones, the Technician had coverage.
Perhaps the most famous of all presidential scandals, Watergate, was featured heavily in many Technician editions in the ‘70s. On Nov. 2, 1973, the Technician printed not one, but two articles on its front page. The first, titled “Student leaders: impeach Nixon” discussed a joint statement from student body presidents from NC State, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro and Duke to North Carolina representatives, urging for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon more than a year before he eventually resigned. A portion of the statement was ran with the article and read as follows:
“One, we believe that Richard Nixon should resign because he can no longer govern effectively. Two, we believe there are more than sufficient grounds to impeach the President should he refuse to resign.”
The article also included a list of 12 reasons the collection of student presidents thought justified their statement, including the presidential authorization and subsequent cover-up of U.S bombings in Cambodia, Nixon’s involvement and attempted cover-up of the burglary of the Watergate building and the President’s general interference in the pursuit of justice.
The second article, titled “Senate passes impeachment resolution” discussed the NC State Student Senate’s decision to pass a resolution with the same goal of “urging the complement of impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.”
On Oct. 12, 1973, shortly before these articles ran, the Technician reported on the resignation of President Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew.
“The resignation this week of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew added but one more crisis to the mounting heap of the country’s woes. President Nixon, while contending with the omnipresent Watergate case and the tense Middle East situation, must now devote some time and energy to the selection of a replacement for Agnew.”
Unfortunately, the Technician was on summer break when Nixon followed suit on Aug. 19, 1974. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Nixon isn’t the only president who has received Technician coverage prior to a move to impeach. In an opinion article published Aug. 26, 1998, titled “Clinton, U.S. should move on” one columnist advocated for the public to get over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It began as so:
“Think what you will about Bill Clinton but don’t ask for his resignation and, unless you are one of the true cynics of the world, don’t expect him to be impeached.”
Clinton was impeached three months later on Dec. 18, 1998. For more coverage on U.S. presidents past and future, check back.
