Tag: Fall 1999

\nNEW JERSEY - There is a growing struggle between university\nofficials and a group of alumni, faculty and students at Rutgers\nUniversity over who controls the alumni magazine.

The Rutgers 1000 Alumni Council wants to place an ad in the\nmagazine urging the school to reduce its emphasis on athletics,\nbut university officials are refusing to publish the ad, arguing\nthat Rutgers Magazine does not accept "advocacy advertising."

In a case that could potentially affect the ability of college\nnewspaper editors to reject advertising, the American Civil Liberties\nUnion of New Jersey is suing the university for rejecting the\ngroup's ad.

Richard Seclow, a 1951 Rutgers graduate and retired advertising\nexecutive who is a spokesman for the group, said Rutgers 1000\nhas a First Amendment right to publish its ad in the magazine.

"Constitutionally, [Rutgers Magazine] has the obligation\nto publish [the ad] under the First Amendment," said Seclow.\n"It also has the obligation to let the alumni know ... that\nwe have a dissenting view on what we call the professionalization\nof sports at Rutgers."

Rutgers 1000 opposes the school's joining the Big East sports\nconference and its renewed efforts to improve big-time sports,\nsuch as football and basketball, at the university.

Rutgers University officials declined to comment on the case,\nbut David R.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new national filtering bill that would require filters on all federally funded computers that are accessible to minors has been introduced by Congressman Ernest Istook (R-Okla.).

The bill is stricter than Sen.

\nMISSOURI - High school student Jon David was adamant about\ngetting his newspaper's adviser back when she was fired last summer.

David and fellow students filed a federal class action lawsuit\nagainst the school district, claiming their First Amendment rights\nwere violated by the attempt to censor their newspaper, The\nJaguar Journal. They spoke to the media, praising Valerie\nHalas as an adviser and demanding her return.

"She taught us about real journalism," David said\nin the March Teacher magazine.

ILLINOIS - The student newspaper at Southern Illinois\nUniversity at Carbondale defeated a May attempt by an Illinois\npublic defender to gain access to a student reporter's notes.\nThe attorney was hoping to subpoena notes taken by the reporter\nwhile covering the murder of a Southern Illinois University student.

"The public defender essentially wanted to show someone\non the witness stand was lying," said Amy Gherna, an attorney\nat Craven and Thornton law firm in Springfield, Ill., who represented\nthe student newspaper.

\nOHIO - The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on May 15 that public\nschool principals are neither "public officials" nor\n"public figures" for the purposes of defamation law.\n

The case began with the March 1995 firing of John McIntosh\nfrom his position as principal of East Canton High School.

\nStudents everywhere are feeling the ramifications of the April\nshooting at Columbine High School that left 14 students and one\nteacher dead.

\nGEORGIA - The Georgia Supreme Court ruled in March that the\npublic will not have access to a confidential 1996 settlement\nagreement between the Savannah College of Art and Design and the\nSchool of Visual Arts.

\nMASSACHUSETTS - A Wellesley College professor has filed\na motion for appeal after a Massachusetts trial court judge ruled\nin December that a student did not libel him in a 1993 magazine\narticle.

VIRGINIA - Censorship calls to the Student Press Law Center from public high school journalists rose for the fourth straight year. According to the center, 321 high school student journalists or their advisers contacted it in 1997 for legal help concerning a censorship matter.

After their principal censored two stories in the literary magazine, students at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis raised enough money to publish it on their own.