Campus Censorship Made Easy : Cal State L.A. Adapts Missouri High School Ruling

“Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.”

Folk singer Woody Guthrie aimed that barb at bankers in the Depression era. But it could just as well apply to another hard-luck case: the student newspaper at California State University, Los Angeles.

The University Times, for which I have worked as the salaried professional publisher, has been waging an unusual fight for its freedom for most of this academic year. It’s unusual because the “six-gun” of the censor’s red pencil has never been wielded; no stories have been deleted, no editorials withdrawn, no issues confiscated. But it is a fight nonetheless against those who would rob students of their free speech by wielding the “fountain pen” of the law.

The law is the so-called Hazelwood decision handed down Jan. 13 by the U.S. Supreme Court. It held essentially that the administrators of Hazelwood (Mo.) East High School were the publishers of the student paper, and therefore could censor it.

The decision also made a new distinction: A student newspaper has First Amendment rights when it is a “public forum,” that is, staffed by students from all disciplines (not just journalism) and accepting articles and letters from the whole campus community. However, the court indicated, a student newspaper may forfeit those rights if it is “a supervised learning experience for journalism students” or “a laboratory exercise.”

In effect, the Supreme Court provided school administrators with a recipe for legally justifiable censorship.

Less than 24 hours after the Hazelwood decision, the California State University system had begun to study the recipe, even though the court said that its decision applies only to high schools, not colleges and universities. A memo dated Jan. 14 said that the university system’s dean of academic affairs had already “received calls regarding the applicability” of Hazlewood to all Cal State campuses; the decision would be reviewed.

Then, on Feb. 9, a strange thing happened. Bobby Patton, the new dean of the School of Arts and Letters at Cal State L.A., circulated a memo proposing that the position of independent publisher--my job--be redesignated “laboratory supervisor.” That person would “report to” a faculty member--in effect, would be a teacher’s aide. The faculty member would “ensure” that the efforts of the University Times “are true laboratory experiences.”

Do those terms sound familiar?

Shortly afterward, Patton told a University Times editor that he also was considering cutting the paper’s circulation down to 1,000 from the current 8,000 (on a campus of 22,000). This change, which would destroy the newspaper’s $100,000-a-year advertising base, hasn’t been implemented--yet.

On March 23 I was told that I was being reassigned to the new position of “laboratory supervisor” and would report to a professor. My journalism course was reassigned to that professor. Then, last Tuesday, I was notified that I was being dismissed, effective April 19, “to better meet the educational goals of the university.” Ironically, the newspaper had just won five statewide awards for excellence--its first in seven years.

The professor who has taken over my newspaper class is requiring all staff members of the University Times to be enrolled in the class--another ingredient from the Hazelwood recipe. This was not the case in previous years.

The changes were dictated, over our vociferous protests, without regard for the university’s communications code, which regulates the newspaper. The code describes the publisher as “chief executive officer”; anyone on campus may contribute articles, and any student may be a staff member; only the editor is required to have taken the related journalism course.

The current reorganization of the University Times is being implemented by an administration that makes no secret that it is unhappy with what it calls “negative news.” We take that to mean the newspaper’s investigative reporting, which was cited by lawyers who filed a $5-million claim on behalf of a student killed when a concrete slab fell from a university parking structure during the Oct. 1 earthquake. Or perhaps “negative news” refers to our editorials and political cartoons criticizing University President James Rosser and his aides for impeding the free flow of information.

A cavalier attitude toward information thrives on campus. The student newspaper barely exists, and when I suggested that the university buy ads (to support both the paper and the mission of the university), Rosser declined unless he was given certain controls over the paper’s content. The Communications Board, which functions as the newspaper’s board of directors, has a membership heavy with campus news-makers and special interests. State open-meeting laws are not taken seriously.

The administration’s actions against the newspaper are consistent with the goal of transforming it from a public forum, which it has been for decades, into a tame “laboratory exercise,” restricted to a few journalism students, unseen by most of the campus and more legally vulnerable to censorship.

In a recent paper on the Hazelwood decision, attorney Wayne Overbeck, a media law professor at Cal State Fullerton, warned:

“If college officials can show a pattern of institutional control, even by the faculty adviser, it may be difficult to persuade a court that the Hazelwood precedent should not be followed at the college level. . . . If a newspaper looks too much like a laboratory--an adjunct to the instructional program--it may lose its status as an open forum protected by the First Amendment.”

The Hazlewood syndrome is already showing up elsewhere. The student newspaper at Western Kentucky University is fighting a proposal, made last month, to cancel staffers’ stipends in favor of academic credit and to install a faculty member as editor.

If the administration at Cal State L.A. succeeds in what the University Times’ managing editor, Laura G. Brown, terms “journal-cide,” students won’t be the only losers. Taxpayers, who are the real “owners” of the university and its newspaper, will also lose. For they will have been robbed of an instrument that, however imperfect, is the only on-campus watchdog of the doings of their state university system.