MC 4163 — FIRST EXAM STUDY GUIDE:

First Amendment and College Students

• Why is it that even state university students may speak, write and publish freely? In other words, how does the First Amendment apply on public college campuses?
• Healy v. James (1972)
  • State colleges and universities are not enclaves immune from what?
  • Which case did Justice Powell use as precedent to find strong First Amendment rights for public university students?
  • Do First Amendment rights apply with less force on a college campus than in the community at large?
  • Powell said the college classroom and its surroundings are what?
  • Because denial of official status was a form of prior restraint, the university faced what?
  • The university could not censor the student group for what reason? Regardless of what?
  • For what reasons could the president censor the students?
  • Universities could also impose what and require what?
  
   
  Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri (1973)
  • In this case, the court reaffirmed what?
  • What is a per curiam opinion?
  • The majority said Healy made what clear?
  • According to the majority, was either the cartoon or the headline obscene?
  • For what reason had Papish been expelled?

 

• The five well-established rules, enunciated in Bazaar, concerning censorship of the college press.

 

• What have courts specifically declared that public college administrators may not do to the college press?

 

• When can public universities censor student publications? Know the rule and an example.

 

• Does the Hazelwood decision apply to college publications?
• Kincaid v. Gibson (6th Cir. 2001)
• Hosty v. Carter (7th Cir. June 2005)
  • According to the Seventh Circuit, in deciding whether the First Amendment rights of public university student journalists have been violated, the court must first determine what about the publication?
     
    
  • Why is the public forum status of the publication important?
  
   
  
  • If the publication was a non-public forum, what became the important question regarding the dean's action? (Under Hazelwood, what would be required of the administrator's reason for censoring?)
  
   
  
  • Would the fact that a newspaper might be extracurricular determine its public forum status?
  
   
  
  • According to the Seventh Circuit, what was the publication's public forum status?
  
   
  
  • What factors did the court weigh in making that decision?


• Are students' personal home pages at public universities a form of student expression protected by the First Amendment? Base your answer on at least the following: the First Amendment's application on public college campuses; Bazaar v. Fortune; Antonelli v. Hammond; Lovell v. Griffin; ACLU v. Reno; and Reno v. ACLU.
   
  
• Which speech may be prohibited under the fighting words doctrine?
• The words must be used in a what?
• In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court said rules prohibiting fighting words must be limited to words that have what?
• The U.S. Supreme Court has given states permission to restrict "fighting words" because their utterance could result in what, not because they do what?

 

• Campus speech codes:
  • What principle did courts typically rely upon in ruling against university hate speech codes? What has happened to most university hate speech codes?
  • According to the U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Civil Rights, what is the difference between unprotected harassment and protected expression that offends?
  • What is FIRE?
  • What is a better solution to hate speech than censorship?

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