The Student Press Law Center and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a letter today to the University of Texas at Dallas expressing concern over the university’s interference in The Mercury, which has left the future of the student-run newspaper in doubt.
In September, the staff of The Mercury went on strike to protest officials’ removal of editor-in-chief Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez. At the time, the editorial board wrote that the removal was the latest instance in a pattern of retaliation “from UTD administration since our coverage of the May 1 encampment and arrests, including the demotion of our former adviser.”
Today’s letter highlights serious questions about the meeting at which the Student Media Operating Board voted to remove Gutierrez, as well as administrators’ subsequent violation of the board’s bylaws in considering an appeal.
“UTD’s removal of Gutierrez and the denial of his appeal are antithetical to basic conceptions of a free student press and incongruous with the public university’s binding legal obligations to uphold Gutierrez’s and other students’ First Amendment rights,” the letter states.
SPLC has been working with the student journalists for months as they navigated administrators’ apparent retaliation. As SPLC’s Senior Legal Counsel Mike Hiestand told the Dallas Observer in September, “The law is clear that student editors are the ones that are ultimately responsible for making content decisions and school officials need to have a hands-off sort of policy.”
Gutierrez’s appeal was denied by Senior Director of Marketing and Student Media Jenni Huffenberger, which SPLC and FIRE point out is a clear conflict of interest.
“Vesting administrators — who are naturally the subjects of student journalists — with the authority to determine who will lead, how they will lead, and if they will be stripped of their leadership roles puts them in the position to retaliate, consciously or not, against student journalists after critical coverage, as has seemingly occurred here,” the organizations wrote.
The letter calls for UTD to work with The Mercury’s former editors, who have demanded, among other things, that Gutierrez be reinstated as editor and that the bylaws be amended so that staff — rather than the Student Media Operating Board — select editors moving forward.
Meanwhile, the former editors have started a new, fully independent publication, The Retrograde, in the event UTD does not restore editorial independence to The Mercury.
Read the full letter here.
The Student Press Law Center (splc.org) is a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes, supports and defends the First Amendment and free press rights of student journalists. Operating since 1974, SPLC provides information, training and legal assistance at no charge to high school and college student journalists and the educators who work with them. SPLC also supports the grassroots, student-led New Voices movement, which seeks to protect student press freedom through state laws.