These three words — designated public forum — have become important in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Hosty v. Carter case. The Supreme Court’s refusal lets stand a decision out of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that could give public college administrators more ability to censor student media.
Behrens’ job, as he would energetically tell you, is to serve as curator of the Student Press Archives at Utica College in Utica, N.Y. Behrens described the archives as “four large containers” that reside in the Frank E. Gannett Memorial Library at the college, but he quickly warned that looks can be deceiving.
Since 1974, the Student Press Law Center has been the only national organization exclusively devoted to providing free legal advice to student journalists and advisers and serving as an advocate for their free press and freedom of information rights. Please help the SPLC defend young journalists for years to come.
Student newspaper? Television show? At Yale University its name is a little less ambiguous, Sex Week at Yale: The Magazine.
Students around the country have their viewpoints silenced every year, and the 2005-06 school year was no exception. In Illinois, Indiana and Utah students faced efforts to prevent them from speaking their minds on topics such as immigration reform, homosexuality and sexually transmitted disease.
As a result of Machesky’s censorship and a successful lawsuit by Dean, student press advocates in Michigan successfully lobbied state Sen. Michael Switalsky, D-Roseville, to sponsor legislation defending the rights of high school student journalists.
But student press advocates say they are concerned that NEOLA’s cookie cutter method of drafting policies diminishes local input and that the policies’ vague language leads to confusion that can have severe consequences for students’ First Amendment rights.
Although it may at times be difficult to sort out, Kulenych said that Jonathan Law High School’s policy against publishing students’ last names and pictures online is designed to protect students from Internet predators. Administrators adopted the policy for the newspaper after it launched its site in 2004. Kulenych said some of his journalism students were at first confused and disappointed, but they have since accepted the policy.
But some experts worry that the free speech benefits of online social networking are getting lost in the debate over Internet safety.