Protect the Freedom of the College Press

One fall night in 2000, a dean at Governors State University (GSU) decided to stop the presses. After GSU’s student newspaper The Innovator published a series of articles critical of the administration, Dean Patricia A. Carter placed a call to the printer and ordered him not to print any copies of the paper unless she or another administrator reviewed it.

Carter’s move was a reaction to the plans of Margaret L. Hosty and Jeni S. Porche, the editors of The Innovator, to transform what they called a “fluff” newspaper into one that fostered public debate and turned a more critical eye on GSU. “We weren’t just going to print sunshine news,” Hosty told the Associated Press.

The paper published investigative reports on previously unreported, taboo subjects at the university like grade inflation and abuse of student stipends. One of Hosty’s stories questioned the competence of the chair of the English department, quoting students who accused the professor of using racial slurs and providing erroneous information to her student advisers.

“It was not the best student paper in the history of higher education,” Innovator faculty adviser Geoffroy de Laforcade told The Chronicle of Higher Education, “but it was on the way to becoming a very good one.”

Until, that is, Dean Carter placed a call to the printer and said the administration would be exercising prior review—and the threat of censorship—over The Innovator. The paper’s staff, refusing to publish under those conditions, filed suit in defense of their first amendment rights.

The case, which will ultimately determine the future of The Innovator—and the fate of freedom of the press on college campuses across the nation—is now winding its way through the courts.

On Jan. 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments in the case, Hosty v. Carter. Illinois Assistant Attorney General Mary E. Welsh, on behalf of GSU, made the extraordinary claim that the first amendment rights of college students are no greater than those of high school students, whose freedoms had been truncated a decade and a half earlier.

Almost exactly fifteen years after the Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that high school newspapers could be censored by school districts, Welsh sought to further chip away at the scholastic press by challenging a more difficult target—college journalism.

In the 5-3 Hazelwood decision, the majority wrote, “First Amendment rights of students in the public schools are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings.” The 1988 ruling gave high school principals the power to censor school papers, effectively eliminating freedom of the press in American public high schools.

But Hazelwood represented a significant departure for the Court, which had vigorously defended students’ first amendment rights in earlier rulings. “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” the 7-2 majority wrote in the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines decision.

After Hazelwood, most observers understood that public high school students would be forced to shed quite substantial constitutional rights. The new ruling held that censorship “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns” is permissible.

The notion of pedagogical censorship, though, is oxymoronic. State censorship of the press is not a pedagogical enterprise—it teaches nothing but disdain for the free press protections enshrined in the first amendment.

In his dissent in the Hazelwood decision, Justice William J. Brennan criticized educators who censor, calling them poor teachers and even worse citizens. “Such unthinking contempt for individual rights is intolerable from any state official,” he wrote. “It is particularly insidious from one to whom the public entrusts the task of inculcating in its youth an appreciation for the cherished democratic liberties that our Constitution guarantees.”

The Supreme Court provided a poor civics lesson when it ruled that the first amendment does not apply to high schools. But it would be nothing short of unconscionable for the courts to allow encroachments on freedom of the press at the university level.

GSU is now employing the misguided logic of the Hazelwood precedent, and in doing so is making arguments antithetical to the values it is supposed to espouse. Rather than supporting the quest for truth and knowledge, the administration is attempting to stifle debate and mute criticism of the school. Instead of promoting civic values and constitutional freedoms, the university is arguing in court that the guarantees of the first amendment don’t apply on college campuses.

But in fact, there is no place that more urgently needs a vigorous press encouraging lively debate and myriad viewpoints than a college campus, which is supposed to challenge young people to question their preconceived notions and strive for the truth.

Beyond the benefits of student media as a forum for public debate, the collegiate press also has solemn responsibilities: to expose corruption, to reveal hypocrisy to shine a light of truth on dark corners of the university.

The sacred mission of the press is simply to inform. But when thorough, aggressive reporting paints an unflattering portrait of a college or its administrators, censorship at public universities inevitably arises. The so-called educators believe that the search for truth—the central goal of any university—is not so important when the truth-seekers are student reporters covering the administration.

Few colleges, if any, would question the importance of freedom of the press in American society. Even GSU President Stuart I. Fagan said, “I have—and will always be—a proponent of the free press.”

But what kind of message does it send to promote the free press in America while censoring student newspapers on campus? If the teachers at GSU wanted to teach a valuable lesson to their students, they would allow The Innovator the freedoms afforded to it under the first amendment.

It’s not surprising, really, that the GSU administrators wished to silence the voice of The Innovator. Those in a position of power have forever sought to silence those journalists whose mission and responsibility it is to hold them accountable and describe the world as it really is.

In 1923, The Harvard Crimson reported on the presence of the Klu Klux Klan at Harvard, drawing national attention and embarrassment to the University. The pressure to end the negative coverage was considerable. Harvard’s Alumni Bulletin “counselled the omission of these lurid tales.”

But the editors of The Crimson refused to only report the news that the administration and alumni saw fit to print. They committed themselves to one simple goal: informing their readers of the truth.

“To serve largely as a mere chronicle of events,” they wrote in 1923, is “an aim which is very estimable in itself but totally different from that which The Crimson believes to be the true end of university journalism.”

The Crimson today is fortunate to be an incorporated newspaper, independent from and not beholden to the University. Thankfully, we are free from censorship.

But for far too many college newspapers around the country, censorship—or the threat of it—is a daily reality.

If the courts take seriously the solemn vow in the first amendment that “Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech, or of the press,” then they should guarantee that college journalists like Margaret Hosty and Jeni Porche at The Innovator are afforded the same constitutional protections as every other American—student or not.

Amit R. Paley ’04 is a social studies and East Asian studies concentrator in Lowell House. He is president of The Harvard Crimson.

In 1923, The Harvard Crimson reported on the presence of the Klu Klux Klan at Harvard, drawing national attention and embarrassment to the University. The pressure to end the negative coverage was considerable. Harvard’s Alumni Bulletin “counselled the omission of these lurid tales.”

But the editors of The Crimson refused to only report the news that the administration and alumni saw fit to print. They committed themselves to one simple goal: informing their readers of the truth.

“To serve largely as a mere chronicle of events,” they wrote in 1923, is “an aim which is very estimable in itself but totally different from that which The Crimson believes to be the true end of university journalism.”

The Crimson today is fortunate to be an incorporated newspaper, independent from and not beholden to the University. Thankfully, we are free from censorship.

But for far too many college newspapers around the country, censorship—or the threat of it—is a daily reality.

If the courts take seriously the solemn vow in the first amendment that “Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech, or of the press,” then they should guarantee that college journalists like Margaret Hosty and Jeni Porche at The Innovator are afforded the same constitutional protections as every other American—student or not.

Amit R. Paley ’04 is a social studies and East Asian studies concentrator in Lowell House. He is president of The Harvard Crimson.