STAFF EDITORIAL: Protecting the college press

A circuit court decision allowing limited censorship of collegiate student publications is deeply flawed. And with good reason -- both as a logical and a legal principle, freedom of speech has few detractors. As Thomas Jefferson put it long ago, the American public "may be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them." But last week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati found that administrators at Kentucky State University had been within their rights in confiscating all copies of the school's student-run yearbook because its quality reflected poorly on the school. The decision extends to the collegiate level -- for the first time -- a 1988 Supreme Court ruling, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which held that high school student publications can be censored for "legitimate pedagogical" reasons, as such publications serve a primarily educational purpose. We take issue with the Sixth Circuit's decision on two counts. Our greatest concerns are with the implications of a ruling granting state schools the power to censor student publications whenever they are deemed incompatible with the school's educational mission. To be sure, the court explicitly stated that schools could not censor content on the basis of the opinion expressed. But by allowing universities to censor under the protecting blanket of "quality considerations," the court has provided a powerful and dangerous tool for administrators determined to bend the student press to their point of view. Equally troubling is that, in relying on the Hazelwood decision, the court implicitly found that there is no distinction between the pedagogic needs of high school and college administrators. We are not here to comment on the logic of Hazelwood. In any number of ways, high school students are viewed by the law as being at a point in their development where it is not yet appropriate to entrust them with complete responsibility or liability for their actions. But the vast majority of college students are at least 18 years old. Their country trusts them to die in its wars and to vote in its elections. And yet, the Sixth Circuit has decided that America's 18-year-olds are not to be trusted when it comes to reading the newspaper. The sheer parochial arrogance of such a decision is mind-boggling. The plaintiffs in the case have declared their intention to appeal the case, first to the full Sixth Circuit and then, if necessary, to the Supreme Court. In its Hazelwood decision, the Supreme Court stated, "We need not now decide whether the same degree of deference is appropriate with respect to school-sponsored activities at the college and university level" as at the high school level. Now, the time to draw a hard and fast line between the two has arrived. We trust the Court will uphold Jefferson's dictum and find against the Sixth Circuit's fundamentally dangerous abrogation of the rights of the student press.