Heads up. There are currently two cases - one before a federal court of appeals and the other headed to the U.S. Supreme Court - that could significantly alter the way America's college student media operate in the 21st century.

The first case I've mentioned before. Kincaid v. Gibson, No. 98-5385, has been dubbed the college Hazelwood case. The case began after an administrator at Kentucky State University transferred the student newspaper adviser to a secretarial position when she refused to censor the paper. The same administrator then confiscated - and the school continues to keep locked up - some 2,000 copies of the student yearbook, which the adviser also oversaw. KSU officials have said they were unhappy with the quality of the yearbook, including - shudder - the yearbook student editor's selection of purple as the yearbook cover's color instead of the school's official colors, yellow and green. The case sprang onto center stage in November 1997 when the trial court judge upheld the confiscation of the yearbooks, citing - for the first time ever in a college student media case - the Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which has essentially gutted the First Amendment rights of many high school students working on school-sponsored student media.

Oral arguments before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati were heard in mid-March. And listening to some of the judges' comments, the college media had better wake up fast. For example, when the student's lawyer argued that the First Amendment has long provided strong protection to public college student media, one of the three judges hearing the case told him that his constitutional arguments were "not persuasive." The judge then seemed to dismiss the idea that school's would really allow student editors to control the content student publications.

As he told the lawyer, "I can't believe...the university was going to hand over the yearbook to a student editor...saying 'This is your baby, do with it whatever you want.'"

(As I said - WAKE UP!)

A decision in the case - which directly affects student journalists in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee and could be persuasive to courts elsewhere - is expected to be handed down within about six months.

The second case comes out of the University of Wisconsin. In late March, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Southworth v. Grebe, 157 F.3d 1124 (7th Cir. 1998), a court of appeals ruling that directed the university to devise a fee system that did not force students to "financially subsidize speech with which they disagree."

While the students challenging the school's mandatory student fee policy, who have described themselves as conservative Christians, say they are not targeting mainstream student newspapers, the actual effect of the court's ruling on student media is much less certain.

The appellate court ruled that students have the right to refuse to fund "political or ideological" student groups whose views are at odds with their own. Yet it is unclear how future courts will distinguish between publications that are "political and ideological" and those that are not. For example, most student newspapers include editorials or opinion columns that could certainly be categorized as political or ideological. Unfortunately, the court failed to establish clear guidelines for determining how much of such political speech could be published before a "non-political" student newspaper could be categorized differently.

Of greater concern, however, is the effect the decision would have on certain special-interest student publications. For example, one of the student groups at the University of Wisconsin whose funding would be affected by the decision is the Campus Women's Center. The court actually excerpted passages from the Center's bimonthly newsletter, which opposed certain abortion regulations, to prove that the Center was political and ideological and therefore subject to funding restrictions. The court also looked at the website of The Ten Percent Society, a student group that advocated same-sex marriages, to categorize that group as political and ideological. Clearly, such content-based analysis would spell trouble for some student media.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case in its next term, which begins in October.

Follow-up:
Supreme Court upholds student fee support of controversial groups
Trends in College Media, 3/2000

U.S. Court of Appeals overturns Kincaid v. Gibson decision
Trends in College Media, 1/2001

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