From the issue dated August 9, 2002
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Censorship or Quality Control?Lawsuit by student-newspaper editors tests how much oversight administrators can assertBy JEFFREY R. YOUNG Margaret L. Hosty and Jeni S. Porche wanted to bring a more investigative edge to Governors State University's student newspaper, The Innovator, when they took over as editors two years ago. The two women, graduate students in English, wrote several scathing articles, attacking the classroom performance of professors, by name, and characterizing administrators as antagonistic to student concerns. The students say university administrators moved quickly to silence them. A series of minor acts were intended as harassment, they say. According to the students' version of events, officials had the locks on the newspaper office changed, for instance, and didn't give Ms. Hosty and Ms. Porche the keys. Campus-security officers had to let the editors in when they wanted to work on the paper. And someone from the university read the newspaper's e-mail messages and deleted some of them. Then -- in what the students say was clearly an illegal attempt to violate their freedom of speech -- a university dean telephoned the paper's printer and asked that an administrator be notified when the paper arrived, so that officials could review copies before each press run. The dean, Patricia A. Carter, also ordered the printer not to print the paper until an administrator signed off on it. The printer says he refused the request, and he notified the students instead. Soon afterward, the students filed a lawsuit in federal court that is being closely watched by student-press and professional-journalism organizations, which say that a ruling against Ms. Hosty and Ms. Porche could subject college newspapers to the same restraints faced by high-school papers. "We told [university administrators] they were breaking the law, and they did not care," says Ms. Hosty, who served as the newspaper's managing editor from May 2000 until her term ended last April. "The Constitution means something to us. ... People have given their lives for these rights, and the thing that really [bothers] me is that the university violated the Constitution." Governors State officials say that they've done nothing illegal, and that they were only trying to make sure that the newspaper was operating in a fair and ethical manner. University officials apparently changed the locks after a reported break-in of the newspaper office, and they deny any tampering with e-mail messages, according to court documents. Ms. Carter -- who did not return calls from a reporter for comment -- has said she did call the printer, but she has denied that she wanted to approve each issue's content. She says she wanted an adviser to check for journalistic quality, including grammar and spelling, according to court documents. Administrators have also accused the student editors of failing to follow journalistic standards for fairness and good grammar. Chief among the concerns of student-press and professional-journalism groups: The university appears to be making the argument that it has the legal right to review the newspaper before publication -- even for content. A recent brief on behalf of the university by the Illinois attorney general, James E. Ryan, argues that Governors State can review the paper, invoking a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. The Hazelwood case granted wide latitude to high-school administrators to review and censor school papers, and college-press groups have long feared that courts might begin applying that standard to college publications, which have traditionally enjoyed greater freedoms than their high-school counterparts. "That could have a devastating impact on the future of the First Amendment on college campuses," says Mark Goodman, director of the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit group that provides student journalists with legal assistance. "In essence, it is saying that college and university students have no greater First Amendment rights than high-school students do." It doesn't help, Mr. Goodman says, that the Governors State students are now representing themselves in court because they cannot afford a lawyer. The Student Press Law Center filed an amicus brief last week in support of the students' case, but Mr. Goodman says his group can't afford to pay their legal expenses either. Mr. Goodman says that the group's brief is also being signed by 25 journalism groups or institutions, including seven college journalism schools, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Community College Journalism Association. While journalism groups are backing the students' legal case, not all journalists approve of all of the conduct of the student editors. An independent review of the case conducted by the Illinois College Press Association found fault with both the students and the administration. It criticized the editors for unethical conduct, such as serving on the student government while also writing articles about its activities. But it also said the administration was overzealous in its response and probably broke the law by what amounted to prior review of the paper. Aggressive Articles Ms. Hosty and Ms. Porche are passionate when they discuss the newspaper and say they spent more than 40 hours each week getting the paper out, even though they published only semi-monthly. Before the two took over, the newspaper was "all fluff and stuff" that served mainly as a public-relations organ for the university, says Ms. Hosty. The two English students say they were trying to bring a more critical approach, and to spark more public debate at the institution, located in the outer Chicago suburbs and largely serving commuting students in their 30's or older. One article by Ms. Hosty, for instance, questioned the teaching abilities of Rashidah Jaami' Muhammad, the chairwoman of the English department. The article quotes students who accused the professor of making racial slurs and of giving incorrect information to students in her role as an academic adviser. "The administration's willful ignorance of the deplorable state of affairs in the English department with Muhammad at the mast is reminiscent of the blind leading the blind, and some students have minds and futures too bright to allow them to become entirely misled," Ms. Hosty wrote. Ms. Muhammad defends her teaching and advising, calling the article "not fair." The article, which was in the news section rather than on the editorial page, did not mention that Ms. Hosty is a student in the department. Another article, also by Ms. Hosty, began with a student's account of a discussion she had with university administrators. The student quoted the administrator as saying he was "tired of dealing with these punk kids" -- meaning Governors State students. University officials have made it clear that they found those articles, and some others, unfair. In an open letter to students and faculty members in November 2000, Governors State's president, Stuart I. Fagan, characterized the paper's content as "an angry barrage of unsubstantiated allegations that essentially -- and unfairly -- excoriated some members of the university faculty and administration (myself included)." He added that the students were one-sided in their reporting and "took on the role of judge, jury, and executioner." The Illinois College Press Association's review of the controversy found "several ethical lapses." For instance: "There appears to be a conflict of interest with the editors writing investigative stories about an English-department coordinator who also is one of their teachers," wrote Jim Killam, who conducted the review for the association. He is the adviser at the Northern Star, Northern Illinois University's student newspaper. "While the story may indeed be legitimate news, it would be best to assign it to a reporter with no perceived conflicts." The students defend their actions, however, and say they did their best to provide balance. They say a shortage of volunteers at the newspaper forced them to write some articles they might have assigned to others. "We had a column devoted to what happened on the Student Senate, which was supposed to be written by a different senator every" issue, says Ms. Hosty, who was then the Senate's vice president. Because no one else was interested in writing the columns, Ms. Hosty says, she wrote most of them herself. The feature was not labeled as opinion, and it made no indication that Ms. Hosty served on the Student Senate. The paper's adviser at the time was Geof-froy de Laforcade, then a lecturer of history and integrative studies. He defends the students' ethics, though he admits that the editors had a lot to learn about putting out a newspaper. But that learning process is part of the role for a student paper, he says. "It was not the best student paper in the history of higher education," he says, "but it was on the way to becoming a very good one." Mr. Laforcade says he felt pressure from administrators to get the students to tone down their articles, though he says no one ever told him to do so directly. "They expressed hope that I would 'reel in' the editors when controversial material was published, but I never complied with that suggestion," he says. "My understanding of the role of the adviser was that I should be the professional conscience of the paper. ... My job is not to censor content." Mr. Laforcade left the university about seven months after the students started working on the paper. He stayed on as adviser to The Innovator for several months, but administrators eventually found someone else for that role. He is now an assistant professor at Blackburn College and a lecturer at Illinois Wesleyan University. Prior Restraint? Regardless of the paper's level of quality, Mr. Laforcade and others say that administrators overreacted in their approach to dealing with the student editors. Mr. Killam spoke harshly of administrators' behavior in his review for the Illinois College Press Association. "We believe administrators have acted inappropriately, and probably illegally, with blatant disregard for the students' First Amendment rights," he wrote. Alexis Kennedy, general counsel for the university, answers many questions about the case by saying only, "We don't discuss litigation." But she does say that the university was not trying to silence the editors. And about the key issue in the court case -- the dean's phone call to the printer? Ms. Carter "did call the printer," says Ms. Kennedy, but "she did not say, 'Do not print the paper,' or 'Don't print it till I come down there.'" According to legal documents filed on behalf of the university, Ms. Carter called the printer "because she was concerned that the students might submit the paper to the printer without having the adviser review it beforehand." The call came soon after Mr. Laforcade, the adviser, had left the university, according to court documents, and Ms. Carter wanted to make sure someone from Governors State could review the paper in his stead if he was unable to do so. Mr. Laforcade says he usually looked over the paper before it was printed and made suggestions -- often encouraging the students to write shorter articles -- but that it was up to the students whether they followed his advice or not. Soon after the case began, in 2000, the university filed a motion for dismissal, arguing that the officials named in the lawsuit were either not directly involved or should be immune from prosecution because they were acting as state employees and did not knowingly violate the students' Constitutional rights. The original lawsuit named the university, its board, and three administrators, including Ms. Carter, as defendants. Suzanne B. Conlon, a federal district-court judge, threw out most of the students' lawsuit last November. But she did agree to consider whether Ms. Carter acted unconstitutionally in calling the printer. "Dean Carter was not constitutionally permitted to take adverse action against the newspaper because of its content or because of poor grammar or spelling," Judge Conlon wrote, in explaining why the case against that administrator should go forward. The university has appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which is set to consider the appeal this fall. The aspect of the case that most frustrates student-press organizations is that Governors State seems to be arguing that it has the legal right to review the newspaper's content. "It's kind of a very familiar argument that we thought we had beaten back as college media" at state colleges, says Mr. Killam. "State employees should not be reviewing students' work before it goes to press, or it kind of ceases to be a student newspaper." The university's counsel, Ms. Kennedy, says that such observers are overreacting. "We think the [legal] issues are pretty narrow," she says. But David Hudson, a lawyer with the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center, says the university does appear to be arguing that the Hazelwood ruling should apply to a college newspaper, a notion that has been not been upheld in any other court. "If you go back and look at Hazelwood, the standard is that they can basically censor student expression, as long as their reason for doing so is part of a reasonable pedagogical concern," Mr. Hudson says. The Innovator is no longer publishing. The students say the administration essentially shut them down before their term as editors ended, because the printer is now reluctant to work with the newspaper. The university has formed a committee of students and faculty members to search for new editors to the student newspaper. Ms. Hosty and Ms. Porche are now focusing their efforts on their lawsuit, rather than on editing and writing. "I'm trying to convince Margaret to go to law school," jokes Ms. Porche. http://chronicle.com Section: Students Page: A36
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education