Tag: Winter 2000-01

Twelve years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark Hazelwood decision limiting the free-press and free-expression rights of high school students, student press advocacy groups are still fighting for the statutory restoration of those rights in statehouses around the country.

IOWA -- The first school fined by the Department of Education for violating the federal Clery Act agreed to pay $15,000 in an October settlement with the department.

MASSACHUSETTS -- The state supreme court said colleges and universities must abide by the rules outlined in their student handbooks in a September ruling relating to Brandeis University's handling of a campus disciplinary hearing.

Student press advocates believe the court's affirmation of private schools' responsibility to abide by their own regulations is significant for the college student press because many private colleges that outline student press rights in their student handbooks fail to abide by those guidelines.

In the case, Schaer v.

MISSOURI -- Nine public schools from across the country were named "First Amendment High Schools 2000" on Nov.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Clinton signed a bill in October requiring colleges and universities to make available the identities of all the registered sex offenders who are employed or enrolled on their campuses.

The Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act, which is included in HR 3244, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, will require schools to give students a place to go to find out the names of sex offenders enrolled at or employed by the institution.

Each state must keep track of convicted sex offenders and report that information to all the colleges in the state.

INDIANA -- After 34 years of independence, a campus newspaper at a Catholic university could lose control over its advertising guidelines or be forced to move off campus.

Rev.

CALIFORNIA -- Free speech on the Internet got a boost in October when two City College of San Francisco professors dropped their libel complaint against a student whose Web site featured less-than-flattering descriptions of the professors' teaching ability and personal characteristics.

American Civil Liberties Union cooperating attorney Bernard Burk, representing defendant Ryan Lathouwers, called it a "major victory for free speech on the Internet -- and for student media everywhere."

Daniel Curzon-Brown, an English professor, filed the suit in October 1999 claiming that comments posted on Lathouwers' Web site defamed him. Physics instructor Jesse David Wall joined the suit in May.

Curzon-Brown said he decided to settle the suit after it became apparent to him that he did not have a winning case.

"The law protects the stuff on the Internet that it doesn't in all other places," he told The San Francisco Chronicle. "It allows libel and homophobic hate speech; it is open season on teachers."

The site, TeacherReview.com, allows CCSF students to post evaluations of their teachers for other students to use when registering for classes.

NEW YORK -- A New York Supreme Court judge approved a settlement in August reached between the City University of New York and two men who accused the board of regents of violating the state open-meetings law.

William Crain, a CUNY professor, and David Suker, a graduate student from the university, withdrew their lawsuit against CUNY after reaching a settlement Aug.

MISSOURI -- The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a federal appeals court's ruling in September that said the First Amendment rights of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

ARKANSAS -- Valley View School District officials settled a federal lawsuit in August filed by a student suspended for the content of his personal Web site, but all parties involved have refused to release the details of the agreement.