Tag: Fall 2001

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a school district's appeal of a federal court ruling that said peer grading violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as the Buckley Amendment.

The U.S.

ARIZONA -- The student newspaper and student-run television station\nat the University of Arizona avoided subpoenas aimed at forcing\nthem to hand over photographs and taped footage of a disturbance\nin Tucson that followed Arizona's loss in the final round of the\nNCAA men's basketball tournament.

Pima County prosecutors withdrew the two grand jury subpoenas,\nwhich were issued in April and early May, after they were met\nwith challenges from the student media.

Prosecutors sought to compel The Daily Wildcat and TV3 to forfeit\nto Tucson police photographs and taped footage of riots in the\nFourth Avenue area.

After Arizona's April 2 loss to Duke University, nearly 500\npolice officers donning bulletproof shields and nightsticks showered\nrevelers with rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd\nof more than 2,000, a portion of which had begun to cause substantial\ndamage to the area.

CALIFORNIA -- Student journalists conducting an access project at Chico State University found that accessing public records can be tricky, especially when government agencies are not familiar with what is considered a public record under the law.

Seven students put together an audit of local and campus agencies as part of an advanced reporting class to determine the level of compliance the agencies have with the California Public Records Act.

TEXAS -- The student newspaper at the University of Texas at Tyler\nwas handed a victory by the state attorney general's office, which\nruled June 19 that the state's open-records law did not require\nthe newspaper to release reporters' notes and recordings from\nan investigation into alleged misconduct by student government\nofficials.

Shortly after The Patriot ran a story March 19 detailing alleged\ncampus election law violations, student government president Aimee\nGriffy filed a state Public Information Act request asking newspaper\neditor Melissa Tresner to turn over materials she compiled during\nher investigation.

Griffy argued that the paper's staff members were state actors\ncovered by the state's open-records law because the paper is funded\nin part through student activity fees.

But Tresner contested the request, claiming that compelling\nher to hand over the material violated her First Amendment newsgathering\nprivilege.

FLORIDA -- A student newspaper's attempts to access the autopsy photos of race car driver Dale Earnhardt has left its editors facing death threats and vandalism from people who want the paper to drop its pursuit of the records.

The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper at the University of Florida, has been trying to access the photos since March.

College journalism professors and media advisers often instruct fledgling journalists to go to great lengths to ensure that their stories are accurate and fair.

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\n ''If your mother says she loves you, check it out,'' is a mantra commonly heard in journalism classes nationwide.

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\n But what happens when a school believes that ''checking it out'' conflicts with its disciplinary code?

ILLINOIS -- A lawsuit brought by two former student newspaper editors was settled in April when the Northern Illinois University Board of Trustees agreed to abide by state open-meetings regulations.

VIRGINIA -- Censorship calls to the Student Press Law Center\nfrom public high school journalists rose more than 41 percent\nlast year.

GEORGIA -- A student newspaper editor at the Georgia State University has vowed to fight sanctions imposed on him by the administration for choosing not to run certain letters to the editor.

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\n Brad Pilcher, former opinion section editor, and Stephen Ericson, former editor in chief of The Signal, Georgia State's student newspaper, were each given disciplinary probation for violating the ''orderly climate'' and ''freedom of expression'' sections of the code of conduct.

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\n Under the terms of their probation, they are prohibited from holding an office or taking an active role in any campus organization for six months.

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\n The punishments came after several Muslim students and Georgia State's Muslim Student Association filed a complaint with the dean of students' office, claiming that the editors discriminated against Muslim, Arab and pro-Palestinian points of view by refusing to print three letters to the editor supporting the Palestinian perspective in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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\n Pilcher said The Signal did not publish the letters because of space constraints and because they did not meet the paper's stated length and style requirements.

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\n The original complaint also alleged that Ericson, one of the paper's reporters and The Signal itself were responsible for what was described as biased coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the newspaper.