Last week The Maine Campus (UMaine Orono’s newspaper) reported that their student senate created a resolution which was “a thinly veiled attempt to affect the content of The Maine Campus.” The resolution would’ve required The Maine Campus to hire a faculty adviser, which they haven’t had for three years. What The Maine Campus fears is very real: the opportunity for administration to monitor and influence the direction of the paper’s content through a university employee.
UMaine Senator Brigham McNaughton introduced the resolution and said he wanted to “appeal to the administration of the University of Maine for better supervision of the Maine Campus.” He also stated that “the paper is doing nothing to defeat the negative stereotypes of collegiate life, nor is it promoting positive behavior.” It sounds as though this senator is looking for an enforcer of a positive university image.
The function of the college newspaper is to report both positive and negative developments within the university. It is an environment where students are free to make decisions as well as mistakes. It is a forum where first amendment rights are upheld and administration restriction on content is sacrilegious. The types of restrictions The Maine Campus fears threatens the purpose of any newspaper.
Though The Maine Campus has access to an on-call advisory board there is no stationary adviser to refer to on a daily basis. The Free Press has an adviser and though she is a valuable member of our community neither she nor any other university official has decision making authority. The students decide what stories and opinions are printed in the paper. This battle for control of news content in the educational environment is long standing.
In 1988 high school students lost their rights to a free press. Though censorship had most likely been practiced frequently prior to this, it was the first time limiting a high school newspapers rights was fully legalized. Something called prior review was officially introduced when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Hazelwood School district.
The rationale behind this blatant infringement was that “the school newspaper cannot be characterized as a forum for public expression…if the facilities [the school] have instead been reserved for other intended purposes, school officials may impose reasonable restrictions on the speech of students, teachers, and other members of the school community.” The case was brought about because the principal deleted two pages of the newspaper that dealt with pregnancy and divorce. The principal deemed these subjects too sensitive for the immature audience.
Hazelwood is now threatening the college arena. Last April a Chicago federal appeals court ruled in favor of maintaining freedom of the press for colleges, in the case of Hosty v. Carter, when they disallowed an administrator from Governors State University in Illinois protection for attempting to halt publication of the student newspaper because it reported an unfavorable view of the administration. The district attorney of Illinois argued that the Hazelwood decision should be applied to colleges in this case. The judges ruled that a college students’ rights should not be limited in the same way as a high school students’. The case was a victory for college press advocates, but the court later voted to nullify its decision and is hearing the case again with a larger panel of judges.
If in Jan. 2004 the courts rule that the Hazelwood decision applies to college newspapers the function of the college newspaper could cease to exist.
Christy McKinnon can be contacted at [email protected]