Since this is still the first week of the new year, it’s not too late to make some New Year’s resolutions.  Here are some suggestions for college administrators, based on what happened in 2010: 

10.  Surreptitiously confiscating an independent student newspaper’s bins and throwing them in a storage yard next to a dumpster is probably not a good idea.  Giving the independent paper access equal to other student publications is.

 9.  Stop the irrational prejudice against the Future Farmers of America.  You like diversity, remember?

 8.  Remember that forcing a student to change their religious beliefs to stay in school qualifies as indoctrination, not education.

 7.  Make your whole campus a “free speech zone,” as the First Amendment requires.  This would probably only work if you run a university for Smurfs.

 6.  Don’t treat pro-life students like criminals.  Praying on a college campus isn’t a punishable offense either.

 5.  Hire faculty based on their academic credentials.  Being “potentially evangelical” is not a disqualifier.  On that note, spend some time reviewing a little law called Title VII.

 4.  Don’t fire faculty members for teaching their subject matter.  Encourage thin-skinned students “offended” by said subject not to take the class.  Or alternatively, to grow up.

 3.  Repeal your speech codes without waiting to get sued, like the University of Virginia.

 2.  Re-read Supreme Court cases on student fees, especially if you work at the University of Wisconsin.

 1.  Realize that all-comers policies are as dangerous to the marketplace of ideas as Ford Pintos were to the highway.  Not to mention that they would effectively bar single-sex a capella groups, a decidedly huge blow to campus culture.

On Tuesday, two national legal organizations filed amicus briefs in the Ninth Circuit supporting The Liberty’s case against Oregon State University.  The Student Press Law Center and the National Legal Foundationboth filed amicus briefs arguing that a federal district court should not have dismissed The Liberty’s case. 

The Liberty is an independent student newspaper at OSU that suffered a year of censorship pursuant to an unwritten, standardless “policy” concerning newspaper distribution bin placement at OSU.  In the winter of 2009, The Liberty discovered that all of its distribution bins on campus were missing. 

Oregon State Police investigated and determined that OSU’s Facilities Services department removed the bins because it was “catching up” with a unwritten “policy” that allegedly governed the placement of newspaper bins on campus.  After contacting OSU, The Liberty found its bins thrown in a trash heap in a locked storage yard.  The bins were damaged and about 150 copies of the newspapers recent run were destroyed.  OSU claimed it removed the bins to preserve campus aesthetics and maintain accessibility, but it did not remove the distribution bins for The Daily Barometer, OSU’s daily student newspaper, nor the bins of other off-campus publications.  For more of the facts, read the previous posts by my esteemed colleague, Heather Gebelin Hacker, who is lead counsel for ADF on the case.

The Liberty tried to negotiate replacement of its bins on campus for nearly a year before it realized OSU would not budge.  So it filed suit in federal district court.  Upon receiving the lawsuit, OSU immediately abolished its unwritten policy, and created a new policy that allowed all newspapers the same distribution locations.  The federal district court found that the policy change mooted The Liberty’s claims for injunctive relief against the old unwritten policy and also found that The Liberty allegedly had not pleaded enough facts to show that a constitutional violation occurred under the old policy.  Thus, OSU got off scot-free after a year’s worth of censorship.  The Liberty appealed the ruling to protect its First Amendment rights.

Both of the amicus briefs filed this week are worth a read for their exceptional discussion of the lower court’s errors.  Briefing will continue through December and oral argument is expected sometime next year.

Earlier this year, I posted about a new case we filed against Oregon State University officials because of their censorship of an independent student newspaper on campus.

As a refresher, the students in this case discovered one day last winter that all of their distribution bins on campus were missing.  Believing they were stolen, they contacted the police, who investigated the matter and found that no contrarian thieves were responsible for the missing bins and papers (as has been the case at many other schools)—instead, it was the OSU administration.   The students were informed of the location of their bins and arrived at a storage yard to discover this:

OSU’s purported reasons for this are detailed in my previous post, but in summary, they just didn’t add up.  For months, the students tried fruitlessly to convince the administration to allow them to put their bins back on campus.  Once it was clear that the university intended to simply ignore the students’ pleas for equal treatment, we filed the lawsuit in federal court.

The good news is that after being sued, the university finally relented, changed their policy, and allowed The Liberty to replace their distribution bins on campus, giving them access equal to the other student newspaper on campus.   The bad news is that despite the fact that the paper’s distribution bins were banned from most areas of campus for nearly an entire year pursuant to OSU’s policy, the judge found that the students had suffered no constitutional harm and dismissed the case.

We believe that the law is clear that a state university’s year-long period of censorship of student journalists constitutes a violation of their First Amendment rights.  We trust that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will agree.

Yesterday, David French discussed the ADF Center for Academic Freedom’s new case at Oregon State University, OSU Students Alliance v. Ray, et al., and the recent settlement in Sheeran v. Shea, et al., on the Michael Medved Show.

You can listen to it here.

Sometimes, the old adage is true. Behold:

Bins found in storage yard

These are the distribution bins of The Liberty, an independent student newspaper at Oregon State University. After seeking the help of the police to find out what happened to their property after the bins suddenly vanished one day, this is how the students found them–thrown in a heap, one of them broken, all of them covered in mud and debris.

Mud & debris

The bins fell open due to the haphazard way they were thrown on the ground, and around 150 copies of the latest issue of the paper were ruined.

Ruined papers

But the most shocking thing about this situation is who was responsible for it. It was none other than the OSU administration, who decided one day–as part of an effort to “clean up” the campus–that they would take all of the The Liberty’s outdoor distribution bins without giving notice to anyone from the paper (even though the contact information for the editorial staff is clearly listed inside the front page of every issue in the bins). The other student publication on campus, The Daily Barometer, has more than 24 bins at last count, but theirs were untouched by this “clean up” effort.

Not surprisingly, these events are the heart of a federal lawsuit filed by the ADF Center for Academic Freedom on Tuesday afternoon in the United States District Court, District of Oregon. More information about the case can be found here.