Free Speech Proves to Be Costly Issue : Controversy: Irvine Valley College, school district are mired in litigation over alleged violations of 1st Amendment rights.

A judge intervenes after a professor is disciplined for publishing a newsletter criticizing the college administration. Faculty members are told they must remove posters and fliers from their office doors, until the district’s Board of Trustees tells the college president to let the items stay. Students, limited to certain areas on campus where they can hang fliers or hold activities, file a lawsuit against the district, claiming its policies violate their 1st Amendment rights.

Welcome to Irvine Valley College, where skirmishes over freedom of speech have clouded the landscape for the better part of two years.

In the latest chapter, the South Orange County Community College District’s speech and expression policy has spawned a lawsuit by three students against the president of Irvine Valley College and the district’s trustees. The case will be heard Monday in U.S. District Court.

The rules, adopted last spring, are similar to a policy at UC Irvine. They require students to obtain approval from the administration on fliers or signs before they are posted on campus, limit the places where such items may be hung, and prohibit demonstrations and student activities in all but a few designated areas on campus.

District Chancellor Cedric Sampson stands by the policy and blames the controversies on “a group which is pursuing litigation [against the district] on numerous fronts.”

The district is indeed fighting lawsuits on several fronts. Two cases, filed by the same philosophy professor, are pending. In addition to the suit over the newsletter, the professor has sued over the district’s alleged violation of the Brown Act, which regulates closed-door meetings by public institutions.

And the current speech policy was developed in the wake of a different lawsuit, settled out of court last year. One of the students who filed this most recent lawsuit was also a plaintiff in the previous case.

Yet even as the board vigorously defends its policy in court, some trustees predict that the district will remain on a collision course with students and faculty unless it adopts a different approach to such issues. Board members David B. Lang and Marcia Milchiker, both of whom voted against the district’s policy when it was adopted, say they believe the district is spending too much money litigating cases that could be better handled through mediation.

Board President Dorothy Fortune, who was instrumental in crafting the policy, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The district’s legal bills in the last two years were significantly higher than in the previous two years. In the fiscal year that ended July 1, the district spent $332,000 on legal fees. The year before, it spent $430,000. From 1995 to 1997, the bills were less than $270,000 each year.

“I think we’re spending way too much time and resources on . . . the kinds of litigation that we’re continuing to pursue,” Lang said. “I think mediation efforts would be very effective. If we were to sit down and really try to follow the good practices of participatory decision making, I don’t think that you would see these kinds of things happening.”

Milchiker agreed, and she criticized the policy for being “too prescriptive.”

But board member and policy supporter Donald P. Wagner blames the controversies surrounding the rules on a combination of factors.

“I don’t know [if] it’s overzealous enforcement or if it’s a group of people--be they faculty members or students--who are looking to find fault with the administration, or some combination of both,” he said. “It seems to me that what they’re saying is that the policy, on its face, is over-broad. I don’t see that.”

If the district’s policy is unconstitutional, as the students contend, it doesn’t seem to have ruffled any feathers at Saddleback College. Saddleback President Dixie Bullock credits the relative calm at her campus in part to the fact that the new policy didn’t represent much of a change.

“It was exactly the same thing that we’ve always done,” she said.

Some say the problems at Irvine Valley stem from the aggressive way the school’s administration has implemented the policy.

“The problem with any policy is in how it’s enforced,” said Carol Sobel, a Santa Monica lawyer who is representing the three students pro bono in their suit against the district. “The reason any policy is a problem at Irvine Valley College is what I believe to be the administration’s desire to silence its critics.”

It’s a charge that Irvine Valley President Raghu P. Mathur has heard before--and one he denies. Mathur says he’s doing the best he can to carry out the board’s directives without trampling on anyone’s civil liberties.

“I’m trying to keep an open mind,” he said. “I’m trying to do what’s reasonable based on counsel and advice from all concerned parties.

“But you have here a few individuals who are determined to continue to create problems, no matter what. I can’t always be paying attention and catering to them when my obligation is to first and foremost pay attention to the education and needs of all these students.”