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Editorial Board: Free at last
Student editors given final say

Last week in California, the Kindergarten Cop came to the aid of college students.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that guarantees First Amendment rights for college newspapers across the state. Under the bill, which is the first of its kind, universities and colleges will not be allowed to censor their newspapers. In an era of speech-squelching federal bullying, this news from the West coast is like a gentle zephyr blowing across barren political tundra.

The impetus for the bill’s passage was a 2005 ruling, in Hosty v. Carter, by the 7th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Chicago.

According to the Student Press Law Center, a string of critical editorials caused administrators at Governors State University in Illinois to halt further issues of the student newspaper, the Innovator, until officials could approve of its content. Because university policy stated the newspaper could determine content “without censorship or advance approval,” the Innovator’s editors sued.

Unfortunately, the school won.

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1988 Hazelwood decision limiting the free expression of high school students, the Chicago court determined that those same limits extended to college and university students. The ruling was appealed, but in February the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, “The California Newspaper Publishers Association and free-speech advocates argued that state college administrators might try to apply the ruling to campuses in other states.”

That’s when California legislators stepped in. It was not the first time California has sought to protect free speech. In 1992, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the state passed a law “protecting high school students from censorship, except for material that is obscene, libelous or slanderous.” Under the new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, campus newspapers would also be prevented from publishing libel and hate speech.

Since it took office, the Bush administration has sought to diminish freedom of the press. While not overtly curbing its speech, the administration has made assertions, both implicit and explicit, that a press that goes too far is a press that undermines America. But protection of free speech, particularly that of the press, is one of the pillars of American democracy. Without it citizens are left to wander uninformed – or worse, misinformed – in a political landscape blanketed with shadow.

We can’t honestly believe that any story the press could publish these days – short of divulging military details – would do anything but strengthen our fragile republic. And to the republic, students are just as valuable as professionals – perhaps, in some respects, even more.

Spurred to action by what they saw as an infringement on First Amendment rights, California legislators drafted a bill to protect student journalists. Other states would do well to follow suit.