When hundreds of newspapers disappeared from Utah Valley University newsstands Thursday, the UVU Review's news staff had lots of theories about where they might have gone.

None of them included papier mache. But it was because of papier mache that two Utah County women said they took the newspapers from stands late Wednesday night.

"They run a youth group," said Brent Sumner, student media advisor for the UVU Review. "They needed the paper for some sort of project."

Sumner said the women were waiting in his office when he returned from his morning meetings. They told him, "We have something to confess." They had heard news reports about the trouble stirred up by the empty newsstands, so they felt they should apologize.

"They thought we were a daily paper," Sumner said. "They figured they were doing us a favor by cleaning up the old papers to make room for the new ones."

But the UVU Review isn't a daily paper, so when Sumner first noticed that the newsstands were empty Thursday morning, he and the students were upset. The paper's editor-in-chief, Jack Waters, missed several classes and a test trying to solve the mystery, Sumner said.

"The students put a lot of effort into this product, so when the paper went missing, it hurt," he said. "It felt like we were being censored."

It was a relief, he said, to find out the "theft" was "an innocent mistake."

E-MAIL: estuart@desnews.com