ARKANSAS -- A junior high school student in the Pulaski County School District was expelled for one year in September because of profane writing he did at home -- but a federal judge reinstated him less than two weeks later, ruling the school district violated the student's First Amendment rights.
In September, U.S.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Education has found that about 340 colleges have violated the federal Campus Security Act since the law was enacted in 1991, according to the national watchdog organization Security on Campus.
Few schools have been punished, however, for failing to comply with the law, renamed the Jeanne Clery Act in 1998, requiring schools to publish annual crime statistics and make their police or security logs open to the public.
The board of regents at New Mexico State University passed a new speech policy in October following a lawsuit filed against the university by a graduate student who was arrested for refusing to hand over leaflets to a campus police officer.
Sean Rudolph was distributing fliers protesting the university's free-speech policies when he was arrested for obstructing an officer on Sept.
OREGON -- The attorney for a student editor expelled for publishing an underground newspaper is taking the case as high as it will go in the state court system, hoping to have the student's punishment overturned and his disciplinary record wiped clean.
Jonathan Hoffman, attorney for Chris Pangle, filed a petition for review with the Oregon Supreme Court Nov.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Education launched a new database in October that it trumpeted as allowing students to access crime information from more than 6,000 schools via the Internet.
WISCONSIN -- The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh intervened in a dispute between the student association and the student newspaper in October, preventing the association from stripping the newspaper of its funding.
University Chancellor Richard Wells told the Oshkosh Student Association it could not take away the Advance-Titan's student organization status, thus allowing the paper to keep its funding.
KANSAS -- School officials and two Lawrence High School seniors with a bent for satire reached a compromise that will allow the boys to keep publishing their underground newspaper -- but only with their principal reviewing it first.
Co-editors Lee Dunfield and Brad Quellhorst said they could live with the September deal, which requires them to submit proposed editions of Low Budget to principal Mike Patterson for approval.
PENNSYLVANIA -- The security director at a Pittsburgh college refused to give police logs and incident reports to a student newspaper in September because no such documents existed.
PENNSYLVANIA -- A student newspaper asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case in November after a federal appellate court upheld a state law banning the advertising of alcohol in college publications.
The Pitt News petitioned the Supreme Court after the U.S.
OKLAHOMA -- A federal judge in November affirmed high school students'\nright of poetic expression -- even if the poetry includes violent musings\nabout a teacher