Tag: Winter 2002-03

The face of collegiate free speech could change in 2003.

\nThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago will determine if the free expression rights of college students are in fact greater than those of students in high school.

University personnel at two colleges took matters into their own hands, by trying to silence their student newspaper's crime coverage while parents and prospective students were making visits to campus.

During a two-day period in October, student union employees at Marquette University in Wisconsin confiscated nearly 1,000 copies of the student newspaper for carrying the banner headline, 'Savage beating just 2 miles from MU.' High-traffic bins that contained the Marquette Tribune were emptied hours before hundreds of parents were expected to visit the campus during Parents Weekend, said Libby Fry, managing editor.

NEW YORK ' A New York state trial court judge has ruled that a group that runs a campus food service and bookstore at the State University of New York at Albany is in violation of the open-meetings law and must open future meetings to the public.

It was a partial victory for Tony Gray, a SUNY student, who sued University Auxiliary Services in February 2002 after being denied access to board meetings.

College students across the nation are helping strike down policies that restrict speech and expression on school property by mounting court battles and staging campus protests.

MARYLAND ' An award-winning student media adviser at Mount Saint Mary's College, who faced intense pressure from administrators to censor the student newspaper, resigned three weeks before classes resumed this fall.

William Lawbaugh was associate professor of communications and adviser for the Mountain Echo and Pridwin yearbook for 15 years before announcing his early retirement effective Aug.

CALIFORNIA ' Starting in 2004, colleges and universities in the Golden State will be more likely to be caught if they underreport campus crime statistics.

Gov.

CALIFORNIA ' A three-judge federal appellate court panel has ruled that colleges can limit student speech in academic work after a graduate student attempted to criticize administrators in his master's thesis.

Christopher Brown sued the University of California at Santa Barbara claiming that his First Amendment rights were violated when university officials withheld his master's degree.

WASHINGTON, D.C. ' Seven student journalists were caught up in a wave of mass arrests while covering International Monetary Fund and World Bank demonstrations in late September, stirring criticism of police action.

NEW YORK 'A former talk show host has been granted access to Cornell University records, which the private school had argued were not subject to state freedom of information laws.

A seven-judge panel for the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, unanimously ruled Jeremy Alderson had the right to view biotech records within the Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

NORTH CAROLINA ' The National Collegiate Athletic Association has reversed a long-standing policy that had ignored the right of collegiate newspapers to interview high school student-athlete recruits.

The policy was changed in September after the NCAA initially said the University of North Carolina at Charlotte violated a bylaw when its student-run Web site, NinerOnline, published several articles about sports recruits.