Battling Censorship of Campus Publications

The calls come in by the dozen each week at the Student Press Law Center (SPLC). Often frantic and seeking legal advice, student journalists and their advisers find their way to Mark Goodman, executive director of this nonprofit group that defends students’ First Amendment rights.

Goodman, 45, has seen an increase in calls to the center about censorship over his 20 years there. High school and college papers also ask about freedom of information, libel, copyright and privacy issues, but censorship prompts more than a third of all calls.

And while censorship can occur at any college publication, students at historically black colleges might be disproportionately affected, Goodman said during an interview from his office in Arlington, Va.

“On many [black college] campuses, administrators are extremely sensitive to the public image of the institution because they have received so little respect for many years from the rest of the world,” he said. “It really is a direct consequence of any organization that has felt beleaguered and unappreciated. They’re going to be more sensitive to criticism even when it comes from within.”

The Student Press Law Center doesn’t gather statistics comparing incidents at historically-black colleges with others, so Goodman’s observation is based on the center’s work in the last decade on behalf of newspapers, including The Script at Hampton University, The Spokesman at Morgan State University, The Peachite at Fort Valley State University and The Famuan at Florida A&M University. (See a list of historically-black universities that have contacted the SPLC.)

The overall increase in censorship cases might be a sign that more students are aware of their rights and are willing to do something about them, suggested Adam Goldstein, a new-media specialist among the organization’s nine lawyers and interns.

From 1993 to 2003, the last full year for which statistics at the Student Press Law Center are available, the number of censorship-related calls rose from 545 to 876. Additionally, in 2003, the center received 2,471 total requests for legal advice, and 38 percent were about censorship. In addition to students realizing their rights, Goodman saw two other possible explanations:

First, school administrators are focusing their energy on fund raising and starting to see their roles as that of CEOs. Therefore, “They treat dissent as criticism and, like a CEO, they’ll fire people,” Goodman said. “This doesn’t work when you’re running an education system. You have to model certain democratic values.”

The problem is, “When you censor, everybody loses,” Goodman cautioned.

Because society is becoming more critical of the mainstream media, he added, the negative attitude might have trickled down to student media, inviting more attempts by student and university governments to control what students publish.

“As a journalism student, you feel like you’re fighting a giant all the time,” said Talia Buford, editor of The Script. “It’s good to have someone in your corner to fight the battle with you.” Buford called Goodman in 2003 when Hampton University’s acting president confiscated 6,500 issues of the newspaper’s homecoming edition because the editors would not publish a letter from the acting president on the front page. The Student Press Law Center has supported the editors at the private, historically black university with legal advice and publicity intended to keep the news industry and the public focused on the newspaper’s rights.

Among the most difficult censorship cases, Goodman said, are those dealing with advisers being fired because of the content of the paper. Often, “It’s legally permissible but you know it’s wrong,” he said. “It’s very frustrating.”