By JESSE WINTER

A pile of The Voice newspaper sits in a recycling bin in the Langara Students' Union building where LSU members allegedly trashed them. Photo by Kyla Jonas.

Langara College security is investigating allegations that members of the Langara Students’ Union tampered with distribution of The Voice Thursday morning after the paper ran a front-page story on controversial LSU election disqualifications.

“We have a total of five [eye-witness] statements, and there will be an investigation,” said Mel Fearman, head of campus security.

This morning an LSU member was seen removing stacks of The Voice from their racks and disposing of them in recycling bins, according to eyewitnesses.

“The LSU [was] going around taking down copies of the paper,” said Melanie Steel, an arts and science student.

Steel was also in the LSU office this morning discussing U-Passes when she witnessed LSU member Ram Al Aghbar asking media liaison Eli Zbar whether he should start collecting stacks of The Voice from around the school.

According to Steel, Zbar replied, “Yes, but don’t get caught.”

Natasha King and three other students said they saw Al Aghbar walking away from the LSU building with an armload of The Voice.

Natalie Tillen, Elizabeth Vegh and Melissa Theoret say they saw piles of copies in recycling bins around campus.

“Doesn’t that go against democracy?” asked Vegh. “Isn’t that censorship? It seems like there’s something shady going on.”

“That’s horrible, and kind of seems like an admission of guilt,” Tillen said.

When questioned about the allegations, Al Aghbar told The Voice, “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

The LSU refuted these allegations and had positive things to say about the front-page story.

Zbar told The Voice,  “It presented multiple sides of the story and it drew its own conclusions.”

“I felt that it was really honest, and straight to the point. I appreciated reading it,” said Al Aghbar.

The LSU denied any knowledge of the distribution incident.

Langara's campus security is in the process of investigating these allegations. An update will be posted when available.