News

The state's highest court has decided not to hear an appeal by the University of Louisville Foundation of two lower court rulings that found the private foundation must abide by the state's freedom of information laws.

By refusing to hear the case on May 12, the Kentucky Supreme Court resolved a three-year-long legal battle over whether the state Open Records and Open Meetings Act applies to the private fund-raising arm of the public university.

The foundation, which receives and invests millions of dollars in donations to the university, has argued that privacy concerns protect university investments and allows the foundation to shield donors' identities.

But the Louisville Courier-Journal, which filed the lawsuit, has argued that because the foundation is so closely tied to the university, the public has a right to know how the foundation uses its money, who donates money and what conditions donors place on their gifts.

"The big deal and the monumental victory is the declaration by the courts of the commonwealth that the University of Louisville Foundation is a public agency and all of its records are accessible to the public unless they fall within one of the narrow exemptions of the open-records act," Kenyon Meyer, a lawyer for the Courier-Journal, told the newspaper.

Two issues are left unresolved.

A female high school student who was not allowed to wear unisex or male clothing in her yearbook photograph has settled a lawsuit against a Hillsborough County school.

Under the settlement announced May 10, Robinson High School can enforce its dress code for seniors' yearbook portraits, but administrators must create an appeals process so that students can seek an exemption.

Nikki Youngblood and her mother sued the Hillsborough County School District in June 2002 after Kevin McCarthy, the then-principal of Robinson High School, refused to make an exception to the yearbook photo dress code for Youngblood.

Two student journalists received an apology from the commander of Fairfax County police May 14 after one of his officers seized the students' digital camera and deleted photographs they took of an incident involving eight police cars surrounding what appeared to be five students near their school.

"Obviously, what we did was wrong," Capt.

A state regulatory commission is considering changes to the state's education code that student free expression advocates fear could give school administrators greater power to censor student publications.

The Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which evaluates and makes recommendations on state regulations, is reviewing a proposal by the state Board of Education and the Pennsylvania School Board Association to amend key portions of Section 12.9 of the Pennsylvania Code.

Since it was enacted 25 years ago, Section 12.9 has provided student journalists attending Pennsylvania public high schools with added protection against administrative censorship.

It's tornado season and in a state in the middle of Tornado Ally, officials at two Kansas colleges sparked their own campus-wide storms after dumping their student newspaper advisers following complaints over editorial content.

Ron Johnson, veteran adviser of the Kansas State Collegian, was fired May 10 as adviser of the student newspaper and removed from his position as director of the corporation that oversees student publications at the university by Dean Stephen White of the College of Arts and Sciences at the school.

In a letter to the dean recommending Johnson's removal, Todd Simon, director of the A.Q.

MISSOURI -- Staff members of a student newspaper at the University of Missouri at Kansas City filed a complaint with campus police April 17 because a building manager at the university removed almost 450 copies of the publication from distribution racks on campus.According to an April 19 article in the University News, James F.

WASHINGTON -- Secret Service agents interviewed a 15-year-old high school student on April 23 about his drawings depicting a decapitated President Bush, and school officials have punished the student for his artwork.

PENNSYLVANIA -- The president of La Roche College, a private Catholic school in Pittsburgh, destroyed almost 900 copies of a student newspaper earlier this month because of an editorial in the paper that advocated teaching students safe sex, said Nicole Johnson, editor of The La Roche Courier.The issue was distributed April 14 and confiscated April 17, the same day the college held an open house for prospective students and their parents.

NEW YORK -- A federal court has dismissed part of a First Amendment lawsuit that dealt with a student newspaper’s right to endorse election candidates on the grounds that it was moot.The lawsuit, filed in 1998 by the editor of a student newspaper at the City College of New York and two student government representatives, claimed that students’ First Amendment rights were violated when the college president invalidated student government election results because of the newspaper’s endorsement of the winning candidate.According to the lawsuit, the New York City school’s president at the time, Yolanda Moses, nullified the election results because she felt the newspaper’s election coverage was “campaign literature” that “unfairly favored a slate of candidates.”Ron McGuire, the students’ lawyer, said the court dismissed the claims involving the student newspaper and election results on March 31 because it has been six years since the lawsuit was filed and Moses is no longer the college president.McGuire said he has not filed an appeal of the court’s decision.“Under the federal rules of civil procedure, you can’t appeal when the judge dismisses part of an action and leaves the other part of it going,” McGuire said.

ILLINOIS -- Three student reporters were kicked out of their broadcasting class because they attempted to air a video tribute of a deceased student on the school's student-run television station against the school administration's orders.