Editorial: First Amendment rights must be protected

Universities are supposed to be incubators of free speech and
creative exploration. But the administration of Arizona State
University decided to trample on those freedoms by threatening the
student newspaper after it printed a magazine cover depicting a
naked breast with a barbell piercing.

The photograph was hardly obscene. Rather, it introduced a story
about the increasing popularity of erotic piercings among college
students ““ particularly those at ASU. State Press Magazine
editors discussed design options for the front cover and decided
the picture of the breast was a fair compromise between taste and
editorial impact.

But ASU President Michael Crow saw things differently. Crow
reportedly did not like the image, and he also received a phone
call from influential ASU donor Ira Fulton who voiced his
displeasure with the picture. (Fulton has given ASU $53 million in
the past two years.) Within days, Crow instructed his
administration to warn the paper the university might “kick
the State Press off campus,” if something similar happened
again.

But courts have found college papers, unlike high school
publications, to be protected by the First Amendment. Especially at
a public university, the administration has no right to censor or
otherwise control the content the student editors deem
print-worthy.

ASU vice president Virgil Renzulli responded to the situation by
telling The Arizona Republic “(First Amendment rights) are
not the issue here; good taste is. No respectable paper … could
get away with publishing a picture of a breast on the
cover.”

Crow and Renzulli are missing the point.

This is a question about First Amendment rights. Just because
aging administrators and conservative donors are offended by the
image does not mean ASU students are. The fundamental purpose of
the First Amendment is to guarantee the right to print ideas which
might be offensive or disturbing to some.

Only the most extreme cases of obscenity and provocation are not
protected speech, and “good taste” is not one of the
qualifiers. Public universities’ administrators are not meant
to have the review powers of Supreme Court justices.

Crow told The Arizona Republic, “My only official response
was to ask for an editorial policy (similar to the advertising
policy).”

But the paper in fact roughly followed those policies in
deciding to run the picture: the advertising policy simply calls
for four of the top State Press student editors to review
controversial ads, such as ads for strip clubs. It seems safe to
say Crow would have been unhappy regardless of the editorial
process used.

And the conflict with the State Press is not the first time
Crow’s administration has sought to limit free speech. ASU
recently began enforcing a patently unconstitutional ban on signs
in dorm windows. It doesn’t matter what the sign says,
anything but an “unaltered American flag” is banned
according to ASU policy.

So much for personal freedom.

Free speech is a fundamental part of university life, and a
crucial element of our democracy. Students, editors, lawyers and
activists across the nation should protest the actions of
ASU’s administration.