GEORGIA — Student editors at Armstrong Atlantic State
University's student newspaper,
The Inkwell, filed a
lawsuit Monday
against the university, claiming the school stifled their right to free speech
when the paper's budget was slashed in March.
The civil suit, filed in the Superior Court of Chatham County in Georgia,
said the 2008-09 budget cut was in retaliation for a more aggressive and
critical approach to covering the university's administration.
According to the complaint, the budget reduction "was motivated
wholly or in substantial part by the disagreement of AASU officials with the
content and viewpoint of The Inkwell newspaper."
In March, The Inkwell was allotted $39,740 from student activity
fees, a reduction of $14,760 from the year before.
Angela Mensing, former editor in chief of The Inkwell and a
plaintiff in the case, said that the reduction was a way to get back at the
newspaper.
"The university didn't like our content choices, they
didn't like the stories and they didn't like the way we covered the
student government. It wasn't how they wanted to be covered,"
Mensing said.
During a Feb. 16 budget hearing, Mensing said, members of the Student
Government Association Finance Committee criticized the paper's coverage
of SGA events. She said the meeting was just one example where it seemed the
university was using the newspaper's content as a reason to cut the
paper's budget.
The complaint asserts that the budget cut coincided with an Inkwell
investigation into the university's failure to fully satisfy all
disclosure obligations under the Clery Act, a federal law that gives the public
access to certain campus crime information.
In addition to getting funding from student fees, the newspaper also
receives money by selling space for advertisements. That amount, which was
projected in March for the upcoming year, rose from $15,000 to $25,500.
The university set The Inkwell's total budget, combining what the
newspaper will receive from student fees and advertisement space, at $65,240.
That is a net reduction of $4,260 from the 2007-08 year.
Francisco Duque, spokesperson for the university, said university had
"no comment" on the lawsuit.
Gerald Weber, an attorney representing editors at The Inkwell, said
the university's actions were out of step with the First Amendment.
"The Armstrong Atlantic student journalists were taught the wrong
lesson when a university responded to good and critical journalism by cutting
the funding for the paper," Weber wrote in an e-mail to the Student Press
Law Center.
Weber took the case through the SPLC's Attorney Referral Network.
The suit alleges violations of the rights of three current and former
Inkwell editors - Mensing, Kristen Alonso and Brian Anderson - under the
federal and state constitutions. The complaint asks the court to restore
student activity fee funding to its 2007-08 level.
Chris Nowicki, an SGA Finance Committee member, and Al Harris, director of
student activities and one of the defendants in the lawsuit, referred all of the
SPLC's questions to Duque and the university.
By Rob Arcamona, SPLC staff writer
