Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of allowing university administrators the right to censor of school newspapers.
The 7-4 decision in Hosty v. Carter, which presently effects only Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, has grave implications for not only student journalists, but the very rights and liberties which we, as both Americans and college students, have come to expect over the past few generations.
In short, the case stems from an incident in 2001in which three student journalists attending Governors State University in Illinois sued an administrator over an attempt to censor their paper, The Innovator. The majority opinion cited Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, a 1988 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that high school administrators have the right to regulate student newspapers that they believe will cause a disruptive atmosphere at the school.
The Daily Reveille, though not directly affected by this ruling, realizes that this decision represents one of the most clear and present dangers to maintaining a free and unbiased press on college campuses. We weep for our brothers and sisters mid-west, knowing that their careers as objective journalists may suffer due to the potential that their hardest hitting stories will be pulled to pacify overeager administrators. It is a decision that is both insulting to the intelligence of students, of whom nearly all are legal adults, as well as a blatant assault on our rights to both speech and press.
At this paper, we know what happens when powerful outsiders seek to enforce their particular point of view on an otherwise free press. In 1934, a letter to the editor raised the ire of the late Sen. Huey Long.
So enraged was the Senator that his attacks and attempts to censor The Daily Reveille led to the mass resignation of the staff, the expulsion of seven of them and a general clampdown on the rights to debate on a supposedly free and democratic campus.
We do not believe that our administration, or our state and local governments are as dictatorial as Long was. However, we are not so naive to believe that just because things are good at the moment that they will remain so for the rest of time. There may come a day when unscrupulous administrators or government officials attempt to intimidate the free press of this University — using such threats as expulsion to bend students to their way, all the while cloaking their arguments in the guise of censorship.
None of this is yet written in stone, however. While, as mentioned above, only three states are effected and the students involved have already appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court, if we may be so bold to offer advice to this august body, must take this case. The stakes are too high to ignore it.
Students may wonder what they can do. They can start by become more involved in the political process both here and in the community. It is only through our activism and tenacious desire to hold onto our rights that we will be able to maintain our freedom. Second, we must move away from being merely consumers of news, but participators in the world. It is much harder to take away someone’s rights when they are active participants in an ongoing debate. Last, it is the job of students to hold everyone responsible, from the government to those of us in the press, for our role in informing people as impartially and properly as possible.
The future is always uncertain and shifting. Rights which exist one day become the faded memory of a once-free people in the future. It is our duty to protest, fight and never surrender to those who would shred our independence, and close off the laboratory of the mind and crush the independence of the free press.
 
The Daily Reveille Editorial Board is: Dorothy Paul, Editor-in-Chief; Ryan Merryman, Managing Editor; Michael Beagle, Managing Editor; Bryan Beyer, Columnist; Sevetri Wilson, Columnist
The Editorial Board produces weekly editorials written by the Opinion Editor which express the views of the Editorial Board. However, the opinions of the board do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of The Daily Reveille’s staff.
This editorial was written by the editorial board of The Daily Reveille. The views expressed are those of the board and do not reflect the views of the entire staff.