Rising Phoenix

By Shawn Healy

When Illinois Governor Blagojevich signed the College Campus Press Act last Friday, the state finally closed the book on a deplorable chapter that threatened student journalism at colleges throughout the country.

Turn back the clock to 2001 when Patricia Carter, Dean of Student Affairs at Governors StateUniversity in University Park, Illinois, prevented publication of the Innovator to impede dissemination of articles critical of the campus administration (the paper has not been published since). Three former student journalists, led by Margaret Hosty, filed suit and ultimately lost their case when the 7^th District U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled in favor of Carter, suggesting that her decision was complicated by the unsettled state of student press law.

When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to revisit the case on appeal, college students at state institutions in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, were relegated to the press protections of high school students, namely court-sanctioned administrative censorship.

Such intrusion upon press freedom at the college level is simply unprecedented, and several states responded to a threat that transcended the Midwest. In 2006, the State of California acted to extend professional press freedoms to college papers, and this summer, Oregon went further to include high school students. Illinois, the epicenter of the threat, was right to follow suit with similar legislation.

The College Campus Press Act prohibits public officials and administrators at state-funded institutions of higher learning from reviewing and censoring the content of student newspapers prior to publication. Violations of this act may result in civil action with monetary compensation awarded. Media advisers are protected from arbitrary firings should they refuse to suppress student journalists. College reporters are still liable for content deemed obscene or inciting violence, and institutions may not be sued for content created by student journalists.

In the end, Margaret Hosty and her peers found vindication in the Prairie State with the passage of the College Campus Press Act. From these ashes a new student paper, The Phoenix, has risen at Governors State, an appropriate symbol for the restoration of college press rights in Illinois.