Bong hits 4 Jesus, how to give a blowjob and Facebook all have at least one thing in common--they all involve First Amendment rights.
The Student Press Law Center is an organization that prides itself on fighting for students’ free expression and protecting victims of censorship. It does this by giving legal assistance or defense for journalism students who have questions about their rights.
Frank LoMonte, executive director of S.P.L.C., said the group provided help to approximately 2,500 inquiries with its free service.
“Our one goal: fight censorship,” LoMonte said.
He said this could be accomplished by educating people and, sometimes, defending them in court.
S.P.L.C. has represented student journalists for 35 years, born out of the civil unrest during the Vietnam War. LoMonte said the group serviced both high school and college cases, but the two were approached differently.
“College censorship is more indirect, where as high school censorship is much more direct,” he said. LoMonte described indirect censorship as actions like reducing the funding for a paper, as retaliation from an administration or student government that did not like what it printed. He said that, in general, colleges tended to need more legal advice about information-gathering for stories than high schools.
Many high school newspapers did not have First Amendment protection, LoMonte said, because of the precedent set by the Supreme Court case, Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. In this case, the justices decided that high school papers did not qualify as public forums for speech. As a result, they were given less protection under the First Amendment.
Sophomore Amanda Bouc said that S.P.L.C. switched her view on the trip from a pessimistic outlook on journalism to a positive one.
“From not knowing about it one day, to learning about it the next, I was very impressed by what they stood for,” Bouc said.
LoMonte said the organization was becoming more and more necessary as time went on, due to recent trends. He said school administrators were trying to exert more control over students, especially those who posted comments online. However, he said there was only about ten years of judicial decisions on internet cases, so much of the law concerning online speech was still to be determined.
Though the First Amendment will always be an area of contention, LaMonte said that he was optimistic for the future. He said he believed the Constitution supported the position of S.P.L.C. and he hoped students continued to turn to the organization for legal advice.
