“[T]he case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers…”
One to keep a wary eye on in the Midwest.
From reading the FIRE release above (and not being a lawyer) the critical designation seems to be that of a “non-public forum”. While this could apply to student-run newspapers bearing the imprimatur of a university or college – although it’s a fairly horrifying and authoritarian notion – I’d be curious to see how extensively such a decision could be applied to, oh, student-run online forums like, say, this one, or the ODE’s largely dormant blog smorgasbord. My instinct is that cracking down on online expression in all its depressing forms would require some even more heinous work of douchebaggery, and so, depending on whether SCOTUS decides to hear the case, we might be heading for a serious old media/new media schism on campuses nationwide.
Our website is entirely privately funded, there’s not shit they can do. Even if the Uni could shut down the paper OC or exert editorial control over same, I pay for the website, it’s mine, they can’t do anything about it.
They might be able to shut down some of the old Darkwing-hosted html archives, however. That’s about it.
Right: the argument they’d have to take is that by disseminating material that the administration disapproved of, you were violating the Student Conduct Code.
I’m not saying it would fly, and I certainly hope it wouldn’t – but stupider things have been attempted within recent memory.
Which they still couldn’t punish me for, because I’m not a student.
They could likely get folks who were still students, maybe, but it’d be a stretch.