Universities were created to promote diversity of thought, exposing students to a variety of different philosophies. A bill recently passed by the California State Senate and currently before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may ensure that these ideals are not tampered with by university officials.
The bill, AB-2581, would grant California colleges and university college journalists the same rights professional and high school journalists enjoy, allowing them to publish anything that isn’t “obscene, libelous or slanderous,” according to an article in the Aug. 11 issue of the Los Angeles Times.
The bill came in response to a ruling last year by the U.S. 7th District Court of Appeals in Chicago. The court said universities could review student articles at campus papers in the Midwest.
The problem of “officials trying to silence student expression is recently more problematic than before,” said Mark Goodman, the director of the Student Press Law Center, an organization that supports student news organizations. According to Goodman, the freedom of expression granted to student journalists directly affects other students and acts as a reflection of the freedom of expression granted to students outside campus media.
Officials at campuses across the nation have recently tried to muffle campus media, putting the nix on stories exposing their blunders or otherwise manipulating news organizations on California campuses to further their personal agendas.
Last spring, Oklahoma State University administrators forced the student paper to sit on a story saying President Bush would speak at commencement. At Barton County Community College in Kansas last year, university officials told the paper to not print negative letters about members of the athletic department.
Without this bill, such actions could come closer to home. Christine Helwick, the general counsel for the California State University system, recently told CSU campus presidents that they may have “more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers,” according to the article in the L.A. Times.
Such action would directly affect students at Cal State Long Beach. Rather than acting as a “watchdog” to campus activities and officials, holding them accountable for their actions, campus media, in the most extreme of cases, could be reduced to public relations firms, only proclaiming the wonders of campus organizations and administrators and banned from speaking out against the shortcomings of university staff and policy. Such an occurrence would be a disservice to students everywhere.
This freedom is not only an important aspect of campus life, but an imperative one. Without the free, unbridled flow of contrasting ideas, a university is merely a cluster of buildings whose sole purpose is to reinforce ideas approved and encouraged by school and government officials. Without the free flow of ideas, true campus life would be stifled.
School officials need not be monitoring or censoring the content of student publications. On this campus there is a system in place for reviewing material before it gets published. Both papers on this campus use student editors and have faculty advisers.
As this important bill awaits the governor’s signature, it is important that we recognize the significance of freedom of speech. Without this freedom our scope of the world would be much more narrow and confined.