Tag: Winter 2000-01

VERMONT -- A St. Johnsbury newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the Vermont State Colleges system after one of the system's colleges refused to release student disciplinary information to the paper.

The Caldonian-Record filed a lawsuit last April against Lyndon State College and the Vermont State Colleges in Washington County Superior Court for violating the state's open-meetings and open-records laws when the schools refused to release detailed disciplinary records regarding crimes of violence or nonforcible sexual offenses that occurred on campus in the past five years.

The student newspaper staff at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minn., suspects its entire press run was stolen by a religious organization unhappy with several letters to the editor that bashed the organization for forcing its views on the campus community.

Staff members at The Impact said they think all 1,500 copies of the Nov.

IDAHO -- After a recent debate over the role of underground newspapers in the educational process, school officials in Coeur d'Alene enacted a more student-friendly policy for non-school sponsored publications -- but not without a few kinks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Georgetown University officials are reviewing the school's current policy regarding the disclosure of campus court records after receiving criticism for refusing to release details about the outcome of a disciplinary hearing related to the death of a student.

CANADA -- The Canadian equivalent to First Amendment rights for the student media took a blow in October when a judge decided in favor of a Montreal student government association that locked a university student newspaper out of its offices.

The McGill University Student Society, a student government body, changed the locks on the office doors of The McGill Daily because it said the newspaper's lease had expired.

The lease agreement was entrusted to the student society by the university in the form of a student union in the early 1990s, and the student society sublet The Daily's office space to the paper until 1994 when the written lease expired.

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.