The freedom of collegiate press is no longer in jeopardy.
On Thursday, a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that college administrators in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin cannot preview and censor student publications.
The Hosty v. Carter case started in 2001, pitting school officials at Illinois' Governors State University against three student journalists.
The students alleged that administrators violated the First Amendment in an attempt to exercise prior restraint over the school's newspaper, the Innovator.
Editor in chief Jeni Porche, managing editor Margaret Hosty and writer Steven Barba sued the university following an October 2000 incident when Patricia Carter, former dean of student affairs, ordered the printer not to publish any issue without administrative approval.
The university's defense was that administrators should be given the right to review the newspaper before publication to correct frequent grammatical and spelling errors. Illinois Attorney General James Ryan had asked the appeals court to extend the landmark 1988 Hazelwood decision, in which the First Amendment rights of high school publications were limited.
The ruling did not apply to college students, and still doesn't.
At 34, Hosty is a typical Governors State student -- a university of approximately 9,000 non-traditional students (more than 70 percent women). She is also a former member of the U.S. military.
"(We) are old enough that we don't need someone stepping in to monitor what we're reading," she said, "People who are old enough to be drafted are asked to defend this country's rights, but we are being told they may now no longer be able to enjoy them."
This was a frightening close call for college journalists and should've been frightening to readers.
If administrators ever win the right to control collegiate press content, everything seen in the college media could be approved, sanitized or censored in some way by the very administration we should be free to criticize.
In college, minds should be expanding and academic freedom should be paramount.
Losing free collegiate media would be restrictive to the very essence of academic and personal freedom.
Congratulations to Governor's State for leading the way for the rest of us.
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