Persistence. Toughness. Courage. Curiosity.
Those are the qualities The Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan used to describe student journalists as the Student Press Law Center closed out its 50th anniversary year with a celebration of student press freedom on Oct. 29 at Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C.
Sullivan was among a panel of professional and student journalists who discussed the importance of student journalism and the work of the Student Press Law Center — work, they said, that is more urgent than ever.
“I’m here to tell you that student journalists today … feel like everything is on fire,” said Charlotte Hampton, The Dartmouth editor-in-chief and SPLC board member. “We need organizations like SPLC who we can go to when we need someone who actually knows the ins and outs of the legal work that we’re doing.”
Hampton credited the Student Press Law Center for helping get charges against her dropped after she was arrested while covering a protest on Dartmouth’s campus.
“I genuinely don’t know who would have done the advocacy for me after I got arrested if it wasn’t the SPLC,” she said. “I don’t know if the college would have dropped my charges if it wasn’t for the SPLC. I don’t know how I would have handled takedown requests from international students in the spring if it wasn’t for SPLC. And this is not just me. This is a phenomenon that’s sweeping across college campuses. This is student journalism everywhere in America today.”
Student journalists took center stage to share their personal experiences with the Student Press Law Center’s staff and resources, noting that it was because of SPLC that they were able to protect their press freedoms.
Rozalia Finkelstein, co-editor-in-chief of Theogony at Alexandria City High School, and James Libresco, former editor-in-chief of Theogony, explained how SPLC helped them challenge a proposed policy that would have given their principal editorial control over their newspaper following a series of investigative stories.
Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, editor-in-chief of The Retrograde at the University of Texas at Dallas, shared how, with SPLC’s support, he and his colleagues started an independent publication after the university fired Gutierrez as editor-in-chief of the longstanding student newspaper.
Long-time journalists Sullivan and Eugene Daniels, co-host of The Weekend and senior Washington correspondent at MSNBC, also shared how their experiences as student journalists were essential to their work throughout their careers.
Sullivan, who also serves as the executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism, Ethics, and Security at Columbia University, emphasized that “most journalists would not be doing what they’re doing now if it hadn’t been for serving on high school and college publications, and that’s certainly true for me.”
Katelyn Polantz, CNN correspondent and SPLC board member, moderated the conversations. Other speakers included Duc Luu, director of journalism at Knight Foundation, and Jan Neuharth, chair and CEO of Freedom Forum.
The event marked a significant milestone for the organization, but it looked forward even more than it commemorated the past. Fifty years after SPLC’s founding, student journalists are on the frontlines of defending press freedom and the pursuit of truth.
“With attacks on student press freedom increasing every day, our mission has never been more essential,” said Gary Green, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. “Student journalists are not the next generation of truth-tellers; they’re this generation of truth-tellers.”
Green emphasized that investing in student journalists is more than investing in student media.
“Caring for student journalists and giving them the freedom and the tools to tell the truth is an investment in our nation’s future,” he said. “That’s what your support makes possible.”
And so, we invite you to continue supporting the Student Press Law Center now and for the next 50 years, to help us defend the press freedoms of today’s and tomorrow’s truth-tellers.
To see the full recording of the event, follow this link to our YouTube channel or watch below:
We would like to thank our sponsors for not only making the event possible but also for supporting the work we do to protect student press freedom every day.
Those sponsors include American Press Institute, the Bolden Family Foundation, the Columbia Journalism School, Davis Wright Tremaine, Dentons US LLP, Freedom Forum, Gibson Dunn, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Law Office of Matthew S.L. Cate, Mission Partners, Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, SNO Sites, UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism and University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications and Williams & Connolly LLP.