The North Dakota House of Representatives approved legislation on Monday that would protect the free-speech rights of student journalists at public schools and colleges — sending the bill to the governor’s desk for a signature.
The New Voices Act protects the rights of journalists in public colleges and high schools from censorship, reversing the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1988 ruling in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier.
The stories were fake — part of The Record’s annual April Fools’ Day issue — but outrage over the issue was not. Shortly after the special edition — called The Wreckard — hit stands Wednesday, the student government’s executive vice president froze funding to the student publication.
ALABAMA — During his three years as the student newspaper adviser at Auburn University, Austin Phillips spent hours each week reading the students’ work, offering advice and answering students’ legal and ethical questions.
And although Phillips’ students have the final say on what goes into the paper, “they know they can come to me, call me, email me any time of the day or night to answer any questions,” he said.
Amid negotiations between the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech — a non-profit organization that oversees all student media at the public institution — and university officials over the company’s failing finances and uncertain future, some student leaders argue the company violated its own due process policies to fire its editor in chief.
The student newspaper at the University of Virginia issued an apology and pulled two satirical stories from its website Wednesday after students complained the stories were racist — one of which parodied a student’s violent arrest by Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control agents two weeks ago.
A disc jockey for WVBU, the student radio station at the private liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania, and his two guests were on the air on March 20 when they used “racist and violent language,” Bucknell University President John Bravman said on Thursday in an email to students, faculty and staff.
At the University of Oregon, Vanderbilt University and the University of Montana, FERPA was cited to withhold records and information related to sexual assault allegations. FERPA was even cited at Florida State University to withhold records about Heisman-winning quarterback Jameis Winston, who has been accused of sexual assault in December 2012.
A petition to the nation’s highest court followed a February 2014 ruling from three judges on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in California, who found Live Oak High School officials did not violate the First Amendment when they ordered students to remove American flag T-shirts during a Cinco de Mayo celebration in 2010.
An Illinois college refused a reporter's open-records request for the campus email directory. But the state Attorney General says the directory is a public record. Since the FERPA student privacy law doesn't forbid turning it over, state law requires disclosing it.