Tag: Winter 1999-2000

\nNORTH CAROLINA -- "Everything that comes out of your\nwork is a lie," began an e-mail message sent to the editor\nof the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's student newspaper.

"It will be a pleasure to watch you bleed to death!!"\nthe message continued, "Prepare to die!!!"

The message, which threatened University Times editor\nJillian McCartney with explicit physical and sexual torture, was\ndetermined by an administrative board at the university to have\nbeen sent to McCartney by the school's former student body president.\n

The board suspended Nicholas Mirisis in September for at least\ntwo years.

NEW JERSEY -- An administrative law judge ruled in September\nthat a high school teacher who refused to give a student credit\nfor creating a brochure about a hallucinogenic mushroom did not\nviolate the student's First Amendment rights because the 1988\nSupreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v.

CALIFORNIA -- A superior court judge dismissed a police\nofficer's libel suit against a student reporter in October based\non a California statute designed to prevent lawsuits aimed at\nintimidating public speech.

\nCALIFORNIA -- In a victory for University of California at\nSan Diego students' right to free speech, the school agreed to\nsettle a lawsuit filed by sophomore Ryan Benjamin Shapiro, who\nsued the school after he claimed it violated his First and 14th\nAmendment rights.

OHIO -- "Many of you are probably asking yourselves\nwhy we are doing this. The answer is simple: Because we can,"\nNelsonville-York senior Devin Aeh said in the first issue of her\nunderground newspaper, Lock Down.

"Because this school can take away our backpacks,"\nAeh wrote.

\nCOLORADO -- A federal appeals court in Denver prohibited\nNew Mexico officials from enforcing the state's ban on Internet\nspeech deemed "harmful to minors" in November, saying\nthe law "effectively bans speech that is constitutionally\nprotected for adults."

The U.S.

\nCALIFORNIA -- More than 100 colleges and universities around\nthe country have signed up to participate in a pilot readership\nprogram that would provide USA Today and other commercial\nnewspapers to campus residents for a small yearly fee.

Six months after the Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colo., that\nleft 15 people dead, students across the country continue to face\nharsh punishments for expressing themselves in ways schools see\nas threatening or even unconventional.

\nNEW YORK -- In an unusual case of a private school being\nsued for violating a student's First Amendment rights, a suburban\nNew York student has filed a lawsuit against his Catholic high\nschool for expelling him due to his personal Web site.