Thank you, Dave. For everything.

A free press, free speech and free public debate – most Americans take these things for granted. After all, these liberties have been guaranteed by the Bill of Rights since 1791. And yet, if you spend any significant amount of time in a newsroom, you’ll be amazed how often they’re challenged. Authorities threaten newspapers for uncovering things that they don’t want the public to know, and readers call or write to demand that you fire an opinion columnist who challenges their beliefs. All the while, journalists must struggle to make sure they have the facts correct so they can prove they’re telling the truth when aggrieved parties calls them liars. \nAnd even if a newspaper does its job properly, someone, sometime will try to shut it down. Even after nearly 216 years and 10 generations of citizens brought up to value the principles of liberal democracy, these fundamental freedoms have to be actively defended every day to ensure that they’ll exist for those who come after us.\nThese freedoms had few defenders better than Dave Adams. As Director of IU Student Media publisher of the Indiana Daily Student and Arbutus yearbook, Dave oversaw one of the few financially independent student newspapers in the country, guiding it to win numerous awards over the course of his tenure. As publisher, Dave did not choose the daily news content of the IDS. Instead, as its faculty advisor, he was the tough backbone for the organization, counseling its editors through difficult decisions and hard times, standing up to those who sought to impede the paper’s role in conveying information and ideas to the public and holding us all – reporters, editors, designers and columnists – to the highest standard so that we might be worthy of our readers’ attention and trust. \nBut Dave’s service to the First Amendment did not rest solely with the IDS. Since 2003, he had been board president of the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal advice, education and representation for embattled high school and college newspapers around the country. Given that, sadly, some of those charged with educating the future citizens of our free society do not value these essential freedoms, Dave and the SPLC had to rush into the fray time and again to support young people who dared question administrators’ decisions or express unpopular ideas. \nLikewise, as a member and former president of College Media Advisors, an advocacy group that seeks to improve the quality of student media, Dave helped investigate and publicize college administrations’ efforts to censor student press organizations by punishing their advisers. With Dave’s passing, the IDS and the free press have lost a true champion. But as we work to build upon his legacy and as we fight to uphold his ideals, we know he’ll always be with us.