Here is a transcript of a call we receive at least once a week:

Public college newspaper editor: The student government just voted to reduce our budget by 25 percent next year. They can't do this can they?

SPLC: It depends. Have they given you a reason?

Editor: Nothing official. They just say it's up to them to decide how much each student group gets.

SPLC: Are student activity funds tight next year?

Editor: Not that I've heard of.

SPLC: Are they cutting the funds of other student groups?

Editor: I don't think so.

SPLC: Well, why do you think they're cutting your budget?

Editor: They hate us.

And so it goes on from there. The players may change. Instead of the student government, for example, the villain might be the Dean of Student Life, the campus police chief or the university president. Instead of cutting funds, they might have canceled the order for a promised new digital camera, restricted access to the newsroom or denied the staff's request to use a school van to travel to their annual student media convention. Regardless of the villain or the deed, however, in order to determine whether the law can help, the key questions are usually the same: Why are they doing what they're doing? And can you prove it?

For public college student media, the law is clear: school officials (and, in most cases, members of the student government) may not take any action whose "substantial motivation" is to censor, manipulate, punish for or otherwise control the content of their student media. The flip side of that, however, is that they do very often have the ability to make life miserable for the student press where their motives are not content-related. For example, if funds truly are depleted and the student government responds by cutting all student group budgets by 25 percent, the student newspaper - no matter how much it hurts - probably won't get anywhere by pulling out a copy of the First Amendment. Demonstrating an intent or motivation to censor for content-related reasons is crucial.

Because the law itself is so clear, however, those bent on controlling their student media have - over the years - become increasingly sophisticated in disguising their censorship attempts. For example, rather than simply cutting a newspaper's budget, officials angered by its news coverage will instead decide to "restructure" the method by which student fees are collected. Or rather than fire an editor whose opinions have drawn the ire of school officials, they choose instead to raise the minimum GPA for participation on the newspaper from 2.75 to 3.0 (knowing, of course, that the editor's GPA is 2.9). Typically, such "policy changes" are couched in the polished doublespeak of administrative bureaucrats, which gives every reason but the real one behind their actions.

That can make it tough for student media. Fortunately, courts have promised that they will look beyond the fancy prose to other evidence that might reveal the true motivation for a school's actions.

Still, the underlying problem for student media remains: there must be demonstrable proof of an intent to censor student speech.

For that reason it is imperative that student media accurately record evidence that reveals such intent. For example, if student government members take time during one of their meetings to launch a verbal attack against the newspaper for its recent story on election fraud and, in the same breath, remind the editor where her funding comes from - file away a copy of the minutes from that meeting, or, better yet, an audio or video tape of the proceedings. If an administrator calls up the newsroom shouting about a "lousy editorial," be sure to write down a summary of the conversation immediately after she hangs up, which is signed, dated and tucked away in a "Censorship File."

Staff should be alerted of the importance of documenting all editorial criticism no matter how insignificant the comments might seem or how "rosy" the relationship between student media and administration or student government might otherwise be at the time. Such relationships can sour quickly and though one nasty e-mail might not mean much by itself, it can prove very significant when stacked up with a dozen others.

Also, students come and go and administrators repeatedly use the lack of an institutional history to their advantage. To combat this, it's important that, once created, the "Censorship File" be carefully maintained and passed down to succeeding editors. The current editor might not need it, but his predecessor six years down the line will be very grateful to have a pile of legal ammunition ready to go.

"They hate us" may be an accurate explanation for the latest administrative attack. Without more, however, it may not be enough to stop it.

Visit the Student Press Law Center online at http://www.splc.org.