The Voice

When we enter college, most of us are 18 or older, and are considered to be adults. We have the chance to change the nation by voting in presidential elections, so shouldn’t we have the chance to keep our freedom of speech, as well?

Sadly, colleges in three states are not fortunate enough to have this privilege. We, as GC&SU students, could possibly lose freedom of speech privileges in the near future.

According to a recent Associated Press article, Supreme Court justices declined, without comment, to review an appeal on campus newspaper censorship filed by former student journalists at Governors State University in Illinois.

The university was sued by three collegiate journalists (Margaret Hosty, Jeni Porche and Steven Barba) in 2000 after a dean held future issues of the school paper until a school official could review the content.

The university’s original policy was that the newspaper was student-run, and that the staff alone was responsible for the content (just like The Colonnade).

The case, Hosty vs. Carter, entered the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year, and the court ruled in favor of Carter, stating that university faculty could regulate contents of student media publications under the same premises of the ruling of high school newspaper censorship in the 1988 Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier case.

Although this incident only affects colleges in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana thus far, many other colleges around the nation, including GC&SU, could be affected if a similar case ever goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While Hosty vs. Carter primarily affects journalists, it impacts other college students, as well. Student speech and other college-funded activities would be subject to censorship unless they could argue they were a “public forum, a place or publication for free expression.”

Needless to say, this isn’t fair to us. Having an uncensored college newspaper and other uncensored activities are supposed to help us to prepare for the real world.

Here at GC&SU, the administration realizes The Colonnade, along with other student media groups, are public forums in which we have the right to speak freely.

This may be a right college students won’t always have, so we should be grateful.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 24 2006. Filed under Our Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry