Good breakdown on the legal precedents

Found this from Inside Higher Ed. It covers the benchmark cases regarding the student newspaper dilemma.

Here’s something I did -not- know.

The Seventh Circuit decision called the Innovator, which was paid for with student activities fees, “a subsidized” newspaper, and said that since the university pays for it, the university is the publisher and can rightfully regulate it.  – Epstein, 2/22/06, When Freedom Isn’t Freedom At All, Inside Higher Ed.

The case being quoted is Hosty v. Carter, which the US Supreme Court declined to pick up. I was under the apparently mistaken opinion that since student governments levied student activity fees that the organization was considered a student organization, and not a collegiate one. This kind of puts the kaibosh on that line of thinking for me.

So what becomes readily apparent is that the judicial system has handed the administrations at colleges all of the tools necessary to completely censor their own student newspapers… at -private- universities. Public universities, because they are partially funded by the public, are not considered to be exempt from First Amendment rights. (Still need to find that one.)

*sigh*

Much bigger issues at work here. Have we been asleep that soundly and that long?