Sometimes freedom of the press is restricted to those whose newspapers and bins aren’t defaced and thrown near a dumpster.
That’s what students at The Liberty, a conservative student publication at Oregon State University, learned the hard way earlier this year after the school’s administration rounded up its distribution bins without warning. The bins had been located around campus with the
university’s permission since 2006.
But one day during winter term the bins went missing, and a former Liberty editor called the police.
It turns out the distribution bins, which were donated by local businesses to the privately-funded student-run paper, were confiscated by the university’s Facilities Services
Department for reasons thus far murky at best and chilling to free speech regardless.
Last Tuesday, The Liberty filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eugene. The paper is seeking an order barring the university from restricting its distribution to the student union building, along with punitive damages and attorney fees. The university’s actions, the suit says, arbitrarily classified The Liberty as an “off-campus” publication and deprived of its rights to free speech, equal protection and due process.
Good for The Liberty.
Even if the paper does not get everything it seeks, at least it will have brought some heartburn, legal fees and bad publicity for unexplained thuggish behavior that appears to have been an old-fashioned squelching of contrary thought.
In trying to explain why The Liberty’s property was confiscated and distribution sites limited, the university has offered several embarrassing and likely unconstitutional explanations.
Vincent Martorello, the director of facilities services, was quoted by Liberty Executive Editor Will Rogers saying, “I cannot clearly draw a distinction on how a paper is consider(ed) a student paper that is not funded by a recognized student group on campus, or uses student fees, as opposed to a paper being funded by an outside agencies or
entity and using students internally for purposes of circulation.”
Here, Martorello may have a point. The Liberty is not funded by the student government, and though its parent organization had been a student government-recognized group between 2001 and 2006, its recognition status lapsed between 2006 and 2009. Still, it clearly has been made by OSU students for OSU students for its entire existence.
It strains credulity to think the reason for destroying a student newspaper’s property was to pre-empt some other fictitious organization from “using students for purposes of circulation.”
Something stinks here, and there must be another reason. Consider this one from the Student Press Law Center.
“A collection of e-mails between Rogers and university employees show the dispute is centered on Liberty not being the campus’ official paper. Several officials noted the Daily Barometer has been publishing for over 100 years,” the SPLC reported June 5. “Officials also claimed they were controlling distribution to keep campus attractive for visiting parents.”
Now we’re getting closer: Administration-sanctioned newspapers good, conservative-leaning student-run newspapers bad.
According to the The Student Press Law Center, OSU spokesperson Todd Simmons “said the university has a distribution policy for any publications that are not the Daily Barometer” and “said bins were removed to allow for maintenance access and foot traffic.”
Simmons defended the university’s decision, saying there has been no effort to direct The Liberty’s content. This matters little when stacks of newspapers were literally thrown away.
Also disconcerting is that the only commentary on the matter to appear in the Barometer, if Google can be trusted, was written by Rogers. The Barometer — as paper of record and monopoly forum for whatever debate is still allowed at OSU — has not written a word in defense of The Liberty.
A lawsuit is a great way for these students to redress grievances when their First Amendment rights have been compromised. It would be even better if the Barometer took a stand for The Liberty; if not, the freedom of speech lost could one day be their own.
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OSU press takes a stand for liberty
Daily Emerald
October 5, 2009
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