A talk with Gene Policinski
Feb 18th, 2008 by Rob
Friday afternoon I had the privilege of talking with Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. We discussed a range of issues relating to free speech on college campuses - from the power of the student press to the limits imposed by campus speech codes.
Mr. Policinski recently wrote a column about a series of incidents at Montclair State University in which a student newspaper challenged the regulations placed upon it by the student government association, who funds the paper. For more information on the Montclarion debate, please see this post.
To read a transcript of the interview, please
Interview Transcript
SMNL: What is your sense of how freely student publications are allowed to report these days on whatever they choose?
GP: I think that varies greatly across campuses. Generally, college journalism across the country, when it’s set up as I think most accredited institutions are, is generally a very free enterprise.
SMNL: But sometimes, student publications have their hands tied. The Student Government Association at Montclair State University in New Jersey voted to freeze the budget of the campus newspaper last month after a series of disagreements with the paper’s publishers.
The Montclarion, which is student-run and paid for with student government funds, had attempted to get access to the SGA’s closed meetings—going so far as to hire its own outside attorney after their requests were denied.
GP: The issue there had to do with financing and control… There’s a natural tendency of someone who has control over the purse strings—they also have responsibility. And there’s an involvement there of a non-journalistic entity at Montclair. And that seems to be at odds with the issue of a free and independent press…
This happened to involve a controversy over coverage that had to do with the student government itself, which was the funding mechanism. So, you’re asking for sainthood in a way: ‘Take this money, and you can use that to investigate us’; you know readers would have to wonder if there was pressure brought to bear… It raises more questions about independence and journalistic judgment than the process is worth.
SMNL: What would you say are some of the other major efforts that universities have taken to suppress publication of student newspapers?
GP: You occasionally see advisors being let go for content-related reasons. I think if decisions are being made because certain things have embarrassed or angered faculty or administration, that’s not a journalistic reason to react negatively or control or censor a newspaper.
SMNL: Generally, what have the courts said about the actions the universities have taken?
GP: The cleanest solution here, though, isn’t in court. It’s either for those publications to go independent, or for universities or colleges to declare their publication a public forum and, therefore, outside the realm of the administrative thumb.
I think student journalists are journalists. And just as we wouldn’t think it was proper for local government to have a hand in a newspaper and its community, I just don’t see that we can resolve that on a collegiate level by this kind of awkward mix of government control or government funding and student rights.
SMNL: Private universities are not held to the same First Amendment standards as public universities. What guidelines do you think the private institutions should follow in deciding how to regulate student publications?
GP: I go there to more the philosophy of an educational institution… I think it’s to prepare individuals for the careers they’ll pursue in their lives. And the best way for student journalists to do that is to have as close as possible the same conditions that they’ll work in when they go out into the world. And to me that is standing on their own two feet—assuming the liability, also, as well as the responsibility—for the things that they publish…
Private institutions have an obligation to simulate those activities, even though technically the First Amendment doesn’t restrain them in most cases.
SMNL: What are some of the major reasons a university administration would have for stepping in and preventing something from being published in a student newspaper?
GP: I think reasons for universities to attempt control range from genuine concerns over libel or inaccuracy or at times, incompetence, to reasons that are less salutary…
When you get into concerns about libel, accuracy, completeness, fairness—those are journalistic judgments best made by editors, who then are responsible to their readers and advertisers.
SMNL: Most colleges and universities currently have in their handbooks what are known as “speech codes.” Usually the codes prohibit different forms of hate speech in an effort to help everyone feel safe and comfortable.
But many First Amendment advocates have objected to speech codes because they restrict a student’s speech based on content alone.
How aware are students that these speech codes even exist, and how many are aware that there may be some friction between the codes and their First Amendment rights?
GP: Speech codes grew up in an era in which there were, many times, well-meaning people trying to eliminate hate and bigotry from their campuses. But the First Amendment has no taste meter on it, attached. The First Amendment challenges us to listen to things we don’t like. And we can then react to them.
Hate is not tolerated but I don’t think you can do that by cutting it off in the words; I think you do that by preaching and speaking and demonstrating that those concepts have no validity.
So I think we acknowledge in our nation that there are certain limits on free speech, but they’re not content-based. So I think it makes a difference if someone is giving a speech on a campus in which they say things about a racial, religious, ethnic group, that might be deemed hateful, and whether they’re standing six inches in front of somebody in one of those groups shouting those things at them.
I think it’s a mistake to say we can stop people from saying those words and they’ll go away—we know in our history that doesn’t happen. So I think inherently, student speech codes have a problem.
<ShallMakeNoLaw.com, 2008>
