Tag: Spring 1997

Six states have passed student free expression legislation to restore free speech protections in the wake of restrictions set by the Supreme Court in the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision, and six more have introduced similar bills this session.

The warning bells first went off when the communications department at the University of Texas-Pan American announced it was taking the student newspaper, The Pan-American, under its wing to get journalism students more involved.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission may have acted illegally when it confiscated the film of a student photographer who was taking pictures for the University of Dallas student newspaper at a Groundhog Day party.

A federal appeals court in North Carolina joined a growing number of jurisdictions when it ruled last October that the U.S. Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier applied to the classroom speech of teachers as well as students.

The Torch at St. John's University ignited a debate about free press when staff writer Peggy Hoey wrote a column defending the right to legal abortion, bringing the paper head to head in a censorship battle with the Catholic school's administrators.

The Student Press Law Center frequently receives calls from student journalists and advisers who have questions about trademark law.

According to a long-awaited report released by the Department of Education to Congress, only 40 percent of postsecondary institutions that are required by law to compile and report statistics of crime on their campuses said they follow federal guidelines in defining campus crimes.

When student editors at St. Ambrose University ran a news story last fall about a computer lab supervisor making Internet porn available from a university-owned computer they used some of the porn in question for illustrations in the newspaper.

A report issued by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) in March criticized the U.S. Department of Education for its failure to monitor institutional compliance with the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1991, a federal law that requires schools to compile and distribute an annual statistical report on campus crime.

Editor in chief John Tedesco and three other top editors quit working for Logos at the University of the Incarnate Word as a protest over censorship of the paper.