It's
Time to Speak Out!
Central
Washington University students and faculty will once again have
the opportunity to voice their opinions on controversial issues
this quarter beginning Tuesday, Jan. 23 during the first SpeakOut
Central session of 2007. The topic of this session: should high
school and college newspapers be subject to censorship by their
teachers?
On Friday, Jan. 26, the bill currently known as the Student Press
Rights Bill will be presented before the Washington state Judiciary
Committee, said Cynthia Mitchell, chair of Central's 2006-2007
First Amendment Festival.
The bill would give student reporters in Washington State the
same freedom of the press and freedom of expression rights as
professional reporters. Teacher and faculty could not stop a paper
from going to press or omit any part of it unless it was deemed
obscene, libelous, or was determined to create a "clear and
present danger" of causing unlawful acts on school premises,
the violation of school regulations, or the "material and
substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school."
In return, schools, districts and administrators would be protected
from any liability as long as they hadn't interfered with or altered
the content of the student expression.
This bill is the brainchild of State Representative Dave Upthegrove
and Brian Schraum, who worked on his high school and college paper
and is now president of the SPJ chapter at Washington State University.
The pair were spurred to action by the 2005 Hosty v. Carter case.
In that case, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that
a college official could censor a student paper because the university
financed the paper and because the paper wasn't deemed to be a
public forum, and therefore wasn’t protected under the First
Amendment.
The proposed Washington State legislation would designate all
college media as public forums and would shield them from censorship
regardless of whether the school provided any funding or whether
it was part of a class.
Those interested in speaking on the issue of student reporters’
rights should come to the Speak out session on the 23rd. Speak
Out is part of the First Amendment Festival currently going on
at Central. According to its Web site, the Festival is designed
to celebrate the rights granted by the First Amendment. Last quarter,
students were invited to speak their minds on topics such as voting
and abortion. It will be no different this quarter. Sessions will
be held every Tuesday through March 6 from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. in
the SURC pit. For more information contact Josh Nelson nelsonj@cwu.edu.
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