MARYLAND — The University of Maryland’s Board of Regents hasdecided not to implement a proposed “porn policy” thatwould have required films screened on campus for entertainment purposes to havean educational element.
The policy, originally requested by Maryland state senator Andy Harris,R-Baltimore County, as a response to a planned screening of a pornographic filmon campus, sparked months of debate about First Amendment rights oncampus.
“The students couldn’t be happier,” said Sarah Elfreth, appointed student member of the University of Maryland system Board ofRegents. “We really feel like this is a victory for freespeech.”
Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, a self-described XXX-ratedfilm, was going to be shown on Saturday, April 4 in the school’s studentunion theater. The initial screening was cancelled, and portions of it wereshown April 6, accompanied by a discussion of the importance of freespeech.
After the initial screening was cancelled, Senator Harris asked theBoard of Regents to create the policy, and threatened to withhold funding fromthe school system if a policy was not implemented.
The Board of Regents, with the assistance of Robert O’Neil, formerdirector of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression,worked to create a draft policy that would require any film shown on campus forentertainment purposes to include an “educational component,”Elfreth said.
“Even with the best constitutional policy we could create, wecouldn’t guarantee it would be held up in court,” she said.”And really it wasn’t a good policy because of the administrativeburdens it would create. It’s too ambiguous. We would have to have anadministrator who could screen all films shown on campus and come up with aneducational component.”
Elfreth said students, faculty members and administrators were all unhappywith the proposed policy.
“What the board said [Wednesday] is that we’re going to followthe laws of the land,” she said.
Elfreth said she is glad the wisdom and experience of the administratorsand members of the board of regents led them to the decision not to implement aporn policy.
“We know what we’re talking about more than the statelegislature,” she said. “I don’t go in to Andy Harris’ operating room and tell him how to operate.”
Harris, who is a physician, was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center, said heis not surprised there was no policy implemented.
“I think the outcome for this was pretty obvious,” Goldsteinsaid. “It was an attempt to prohibit the viewing of legal, expressivematerial.”
He said colleges are precisely where expressive material should beprotected.
“It may well be that porn is fringe content, but a college campus isexactly the right place for fringe content to be shown,” he said.