**The muddied waters of student journalism**

On June 22, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit delivered what appears by most accounts to be a significant blow to the college press. In order to understand the significance of this decision it is important to understand that the courts have, in the past, ruled that HIGH SCHOOL newspapers can be censored by school administrators because they are run as part of the curriculum.

Until now, it has been assumed that that college newspapers, even if funded by student fees, operate with far greater freedom and the content cannot be controlled by college administration. Most college newspapers are established separately from any department curriculum, although often professors or directors of student activities might be advisors and students might get course credit for writing for the newspaper.

Hosty v. Carter appears to undermine this otherwise autonomous relationship between a college newspaper and the administration. A dean at Governor's State University censored the newspaper, the Innovator, and the newspaper sued. The newspaper won at the district court level and the university appealed. It didn't go well. Here is the quick summary by Mark Goodman, director of the Student Press Law Center - my favorite .org outside of the ACLU. Those of you following this blog, know about what happened to my son and his job as editor of his high school newspaper and thus understand my love for this organization. If the law school gods smile on me, I will be their legal fellow someday. Mark stated in a recent listserv posting:

First, the court said that that the analysis of the Supreme Court's 1988 Hazelwood decision, which dramatically curtailed high school students free expression rights, was applicable at the college and university level as well. In essence, the court said that under Hazelwood, a court confronted with an act of student newspaper censorship by a public college official must first determine if the publication had been opened up as a "designated public forum" where students have been given the authority to make the content decisions. The majority said that the fact a publication might be extracurricular was not determinative of it's public forum status.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Second, the court held that even assuming that the Innovator at Governors State University was a public forum, the dean who censored the publication was entitled to qualified immunity because she could not have reasonably known that the limitations of the Hazelwood decision did not apply to college and university student publications.

How I pine for the 60's when the courts focused on expanding First Amendment rights, not consolidating administrative power.

If you want to read the decision click here for the .pdf file to download.

Even those of you not interested in First Amendment issues (as hard as it is for me to believe it is possible:)) this does not bode well for the free flow of information. Sure there is lots of stuff in the student press that can be irritating, unpleasant and poorly executed, but it is an important training ground for learning the ropes - the most important being that people acting in official capacity should not touch content that isn't specfically illegal as defined by state or federal law (e.g. obscene, libelous, etc.)

I, for one, will be working on formally defined our institution's paper as a public forum, which seems to be the one remaining avenue of protection from administrative censorship.