FLORIDA -- While complete independence is not currently in the cards, The Oracle at the University of South Florida will give up its student-fee funding in an effort to distance itself from the student government.
The Oracle, which has published for more than 35 years, will begin a three-year process this fall to eventually end all funding from student fees.
MISSOURI -- The former adviser of the Muleskinner at Central Missouri State University settled a lawsuit July 3 that she filed against the school for the failure to renew her contract in response to stories in the campus newspaper.
Barbara Lach-Smith and her attorney, Arthur Benson, declined to disclose the conditions of the settlement.
Lach-Smith, who advised the paper for six years, said her contract was not renewed in June 2000 because of stories that uncovered unusual provisions in outgoing university President Ed Elliott's contract.
After the article ran, university President Bobby Patton ordered the reclassification of the adviser position from a nontenure track to a tenure-track position.
NEW YORK -- A student at the State University of New York at Albany won a partial victory on July 25 when a trail court found the University Auxiliary Services, a group that runs the campus food service and bookstore, to be in violation of state open-meetings laws.
Tony Gray sued the university-affiliated nonprofit company in February 2002 after being denied access to its board meetings.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- A group of 25 state and national media organizations, university journalism schools and civil rights groups has urged a federal appeals court in Chicago to reject the Illinois Attorney General's argument that college journalists should be entitled to no greater First Amendment protection than high school students.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S.
KANSAS -- The board of education at Piper Unified School District settled a civil complaint April 2 that alleged violations of the state's open-meetings law.
\n\n The seven members of the school board voted to pay fines for going into closed session at a December meeting to discuss the definition of plagiarism in relation to a cheating scandal.
\n\n Wyandotte County District Attorney Nick Tomasic said the board agreed to pay $250 per member and $1,238 as a whole in investigation and court costs for one of the five charges.
TEXAS -- A Wichita Falls judge ruled July 12 that the Midwestern State University Board of Regents violated the state open-meetings law when it failed to properly notify the public of pending action against former President Henry Moon.
\n\n The judge granted the Times Record News' request for a temporary injunction against the regents, voiding their decision to fire Moon, who was embroiled in controversy and subsequently placed on administrative leave in August 2001.
\n\n The paper filed the suit after the regents met in executive session on \nJune 11 to discuss Moon's status at the university, including the possibility of ending his administrative leave and pay status.
\n\n University attorney Roger Lee said the board is likely to reconvene an open meeting to reconsider the matter.
ILLINOIS ' A state appellate court overturned a trial court decision in June concerning the Chicago Tribune's request for student information.
The Tribune sued the Chicago School District after it refused to release information about unnamed students, including attendance records, test scores, race and transportation status, among several other categories.
WISCONSIN ' The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled July 2 that University of Wisconsin officials must comply with open-records requests and release information about applicants that does not compromise individual identities.
The court ruled that exemptions under federal and state law do not allow the board of regents to deny the release of the information sought by law student J.
FLORIDA ' A state appeals court ruled July 12 that Florida's Earnhardt Protection Act, which restricts public access to autopsy photos, is constitutional.
The law was passed after racecar driver Dale Earnhardt's death during the Daytona 500 in February 2001.Several news organizations, including the University of Florida's Independent Florida Alligator, challenged the law on grounds that it was in conflict with public information rights in the Florida Constitution.
The Florida Court of Appeals ruled the right to privacy outweighed any public interest in the 33 photos, taken as backups to the assistant medical examiner's tape-recorded notes of the autopsy.