Free speech and your university Internet account

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Rachel Alexander

Although the UA has not been involved in any of these highly contentious situations with students, there have been some close calls, and UA's policy regarding the use of Internet accounts has been questioned as possibly violating free speech.

The Supreme Court has held that free speech, which includes art and public expression, applies to public universities. In Healy v. James, the court stated that past precedents should leave no room for the view that "First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large."

The right to free speech applies to public places, particularly places that are used as a "public forum." Web pages, which are comparable to public libraries in the way they display infor-mation to the general public, clearly fall within the definition of a "public forum."

The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment protects all speech, with very few exceptions, such as "fighting words" and "obscenity." Commercial speech gets less protection than regular speech.

Libel and slander against a person are generally settled after the fact with tort suits; you may write lies about someone, but they can sue you later. This standard does not apply to groups however; generalizing about a group of people is protected free speech.

The exceptions to free speech have been enforced sparingly, because of the Supreme Court's concern for the protection of that right. Rarely has the Court found any speech that qualified under the "fighting words" exception, and it has defined "obscenity" in extremely narrow terms.

Consequently, the few attempts at other public universities to censure students' use of the Internet for free expression have failed, running into constitutional violations.

In 1995, at Georgia State University, the administration tried to censure a white supremacist Web page put up by one of the students. Protests against the Web page came in from all over the world, but the University could not shut down the site. The University's lawyers acknowledged that the student had a right to free speech. According to their legal counsel, "We have not tried to deal with content-based issues because it would be inappropriate for a state university to do it. We'd like him to go away, but as a student he has the right to do it."

In 1995, at the University of Memphis, a student was charged with violating the Student Conduct Code for posting a dirty message on the University's news server. The student challenged the code as infringing on free speech, stating that his message did not fit the definition of "obscenity," which the Supreme Court had ruled was outside the protections of free speech. The Supreme Court has said that a work is obscene "if, to the average person, applying community standards, the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

The university admitted that the student's message did not fit the narrow definition of "obscene," as laid out by the court, and dismissed the charges against him. The Dean wrote, "No matter how highly offensive material may be, the university cannot censure it unless it meets the test for obscenity or is otherwise outside of First Amendment protection."

Even hate speech at a public university is protected under the First Amendment.

Since the "fighting words" exception was created by the Supreme Court in 1941, (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire), it has never been used to prevent hate speech. In 1991, a federal district court in Wisconsin invalidated a campus hate speech regulation at the University of Wisconsin for being overbroad and vague, because it banned more than the few acknowledged exceptions to free speech.

Currently, at the UA, to obtain a University Internet account, students must sign a form that prohibits certain types of use and restricts activity to "appropriate" use. Parts of this form may be unconstitutional. Part 5 of the CCIT Computer and Network Usage Policy states, "Do not use computer systems to send, post, or display offensive, abusive, slanderous, vulgar, or defamatory messages, text, graphics, or images. This includes harassment and intimidation of individuals on the basis of race, sex, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, etc."

This is an extremely broad prohibition and clearly prohibits more than the exceptions to the First Amendment. The part preventing hate speech clearly would be struck down in light of the Wisconsin decision.

Part 6 states, "Ensure that the use of computer resources and networks is academically oriented."

Similarly, this restricts free speech and is also unconstitutional.

The contract that student organizations must fill out to obtain an Internet account has similar restrictions. There have been a few incidents where student groups have been pressured to refrain from certain types of usage, but as far as I can tell, no outright censorship.

This is commendable, but it makes you think: should the definition of free speech go so far as to allow students to post pornography on the Internet?

Was the First Amendment written to protect freedom of speech, or sleaze?

Rachel Alexander is a law student. Her column, Common Sense, appears on alternate Tuesdays and she can be reached via e-mail at Rachel.Alexander@wildcat.arizona.edu.