On March 3, a Texas university football coach publicly praised a number of his players for removing every issue of the campus newspaper from stands because it contained a story on a teammate’s recent arrest on drug charges.
Texas A&M Commerce’s coach Guy Morris lauded the action as the “best team building exercise we have ever done.”
Though there have been no arrests made in the removal of the 2,000 copies so far, the paper’s Editor is estimating the loss at about $1,000.
At the risk of sounding callous, who cares about the monetary loss? There are much more important and disturbing things at play here. For Morris to condone any act of theft by his players (no matter how small) in unconscionable. Is this how we treat our college athletes, as if they are somehow above the law? Perhaps it’s good practice for when they become professional athletes and they really can get away with anything, and breaking one rule to cover up another violation will garner little more than a slap on the wrist.
Was the story somehow libelous? Was it not true? Is that why the football team took it upon themselves to censor it? Had that been the case, maybe their actions would be more understandable. Many U.S. universities have speech codes in place to prevent the publication of libel, harassment or hate speech, but unless any of those were present in the story, it should be allowed to be printed and remain on the newstands.
Perhaps it’s safe to assume that neither a football coach nor his players have extensive knowledge of censorship laws, so chances are the papers were stolen because of the potential negative reaction of the public when they discovered that one of the team’s players had been arrested on drug charges. After the glory of a 5-5 record last year, a drug scandal would have no doubt been devastating news and quite detrimental to the team.
Here’s news for YOU, Coach Morris and for your players; it is not up to you to decide what information the public can and cannot have access to. An arrest is considered public record and, as such, is available for public scrutiny as dictated by the Freedom of Information Act.
Sonoma State is now planning to release its new and revised free speech policy, “Campus Expression: Time, Place and Manner.” Though it’s not nearly as extreme as the theft of 2,000 student newspapers, it remains a limitation on freedom of speech and is therefore unconstitutional and unacceptable.
Place and manner aside, the time is now, time for students to stand up and ask why such extreme measures like this are even necessary. Is the First Amendment not enough? Why do universities and administrators feel the need to restrict the automatic rights granted by the U.S. Constitution? As centers of learning, of diversity and open-mindedness, it is imperative that freedom of speech (and of the press) exists unfettered and unrestrained on college campuses.
It’s obvious that Coach Morris was laboring under the assumption that he was protecting his team from potential public ridicule and perhaps even protecting the public from a story that he saw as damaging. It’s also seems obvious that universities with so-called “free speech policies” believe they too are protecting something, whether it be their learning environments by ensuring that nothing disrupts or threatens them, or their students, who just don’t want to be bothered by hearing or seeing anything unpleasant.
As all these shields fall into place in the form of restrictive policies and when the noose of censorship gets tighter and tighter under a guise of security and protection, will anyone protect the inherent Constitutional rights granted by the First Amendment or will they be slowly gagged and chocked until they are cut off completely?
No comments:
Post a Comment