June 22, 2005

Court threatens student voice
Editorial, Daily Texan

With the long overdue decision on Hosty v. Carter, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has threatened the future of student speech, especially concerning the freedom of the student presses.

The court has ruled that college students are no more free from censorship than high school students. They have curtailed and threatened the "marketplace of ideas" that a campus is founded upon, opening a gateway for university administration to trample upon the First Amendment rights of the student presses and student organizations.

The Hosty case began in 2000 when a group of students from Governors State University published unfavorable articles about the university administration in the student newspaper the Innovator. The articles aggravated the powers-that-be to the point that the Student Affairs Dean Patricia Carter told the printer to shut down the presses.

The students of the Innovator refused allow prior review of the paper by the administration and sued on First Amendment grounds. A full judicial panel of the 7th Circuit heard the case in 2004.

Tuesday, the panel ruled in a 7-4 decision that the infamous 1988 Hazelwood decision, which allowed for the censorship of high school newspapers if the content undermined a learning environment, could apply to college campuses.

A college population is one of legal adults without need of censoring parents or administrators.

Even more frightening, the rule could be interpreted to allow the censorship of student organizations that invite controversial speakers to campuses.

"This decision gives college administrators ammunition to argue that many traditionally independent student activities are subject to school censorship," said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center.

The only silver lining is the court's ruling that the Innovator qualified as an open forum and could not be censored under the rules set by Hazelwood.

However, by even invoking the rules of Hazelwood to a case concerning college presses, the court has threatened the independence of student journalists everywhere.

Some may say we have no need to be worried in Texas. The case only concerns those in the 7th Circuit, including Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. However, fellow circuit courts look to each other for decisions all the time. They often consider the previous rulings of other districts and align their decisions. A dissent among the district courts may mean the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case, and no district judge wants his rulings overturned.

Furthermore, the Hosty majority opinion validated the GSU administration's request for prior review of content. The court ultimately ruled that the newspaper was out of reach from administrative censorship, because it was an open forum of free speech and had always allowed the student editors to control the content.

However, by applying the Hazelwood case to college campuses, the decision allowed administrators to bypass the First Amendment by claiming their censorship was for the good of a learning environment -- essentially the same reasoning by which high school faculty could punish students for purple hair by claiming it was a distraction to a learning environment.

The prior review system is one of the most virulent forms of impeding free speech. The administrators of GSU, upset with the newspaper's unfavorable coverage, wanted a faculty member of the university to review the content before print.

At The Daily Texan, we have a version of prior review that is in place to protect the newspaper from libelous content, but Texas Student Publications is currently in the process of removing this requirement mandated by the university.

Prior review would allow university administrators around the country to check over news content, thereby castrating the media and its role as a watchdog.

The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that a college campus is meant for a marketplace of ideas. The 7th Circuit decision has opened a gateway for an impotent press and a censored body of student speech.