After administrators put student productions of “Rent,” “Sweeney Todd” on the chopping block due to sensitive subjects, students and dramatists push back, defending the importance of theater.
Student and professional journalists alike report increasing difficulty when it comes to accessing sources. In response, college newspaper editors say they now teach their staff to have the ‘confidence’ to push back.
Every year, colleges and universities report to the federal government how many students are referred for discipline for violating alcohol, drug and weapon violations. These statistics are often overshadowed by statistics that detail violent crimes, but as a Student Press Law Center review shows, disciplinary data can be a useful source for student reporters.
Purdue University plans to revisit its investigation into police treatment of a student photographer who was detained shortly after a fatal campus shooting, saying it wants to look over information that wasn’t taken into consideration previously.
In a written ruling issued earlier this month, a state public access counselor said Purdue University doesn’t have to release surveillance video footage and other records requested by The Purdue Exponent because of a public-records exemption allowing an agency to withhold “investigatory records.”
After copies of The Beacon disappeared from newsstands last month, editor Jake Cochran said he was left asking: "Who would have an interest in not having that news there?" But with no witnesses and no similar incidents since the March 22 disappearance, pinning down an answer to that question has been difficult.
What a child thought was a gun inside a Baltimore-area school turned out to be a piece of photo equipment that a journalism graduate student was using.
The editor-in-chief of a New Jersey high school newspaper planned to publish a story in the most recent edition about a conflict between administrators and the superintendent. Instead, she ended up publishing a story explaining why that article didn't appear.
At SPLC, we often call attention to expression issues as they relate to student media.
Two years ago, a Temple University student’s attempt to complete a photojournalism assignment by taking pictures of a police traffic stop ended in arrest for both him and his girlfriend, who was accompanying him at the time. The pair was acquitted on charges of obstructing justice later that year, but the issue is back in court this month — this time, in a civil lawsuit filed by the pair against the two Philadelphia police officers who made the arrest.