Three court cases this winter addressed the contentious issue of Internet freedoms and liability on the nation's college campuses.
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled in October that a former professor at the University of Evansville had acted as a 'cyberpredator' through the use of his e-mail and Web pages.
The court's decision in Felsher v.
The U.S. Department of Education is conducting investigations at four colleges that allegedly failed to properly report crime statistics as required by law.
The DOE visited St.
NEW YORK ' The Tangerine, the student newspaper at Utica College, was told directly by the college's president not to run an advertisement for a competing educational institution in September.
SUNY Institute of Technology, another college in Utica, paid to advertise its fall open house in The Tangerine. The ad infuriated Utica President Todd Hutton, who sent an e-mail to the paper's faculty adviser, Kim Landon, telling her not to publish similar ads in the future.
'This is absolutely inexcusable,' Hutton wrote.
A number of college professors and staff members were censored for comments they made regarding the Sept.
WASHINGTON D.C. ' U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., introduced the School Website Protection Act in August, aiming to imprison hackers who disrupt school computers.
The legislation, S 1252, implicates anyone who 'knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such contact, intentionally affects or impairs without authorization a computer of an elementary school or secondary school or institution of higher education.'
The bill, however, is failing to garner much support on Capitol Hill due in part to the concerns of student-rights advocates and Internet experts who find its potentially expansive scope troubling.
MISSOURI ' A lawsuit filed against the University of Missouri by Kansas City television station WDAF/Fox 4 was dropped in September.
The lawsuit claimed the university was in violation of the state's sunshine law when it refused to disclose information from campus disciplinary proceedings involving violent crimes and non-forcible sex offenses occurring between 1996 and 1999.
The station is being sold, and 'has no interest in pursuing the story,' said Jean Maneke, attorney for the Fox station.
MISSOURI ' A debate erupted this semester over whether college departments should pay for ads in St.
High school students and teachers across the nation faced punishment for acts that would have likely gone unquestioned before the terrorist attacks.
ARKANSAS -- Gov. Mike Huckabee signed a law, 2001 Ark. Acts 1533, that will require all schools to install uniform filtering software on their computers.
\n\n HB 1003 won approval in April after sponsors withdrew a portion that would have required public libraries to comply.
\n\n The state is currently evaluating software programs.