The unfree student press

Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, with whom I’ve occasionally collaborated, has written a chilling column for the National Law Journal on Hosty v. Carter, which could seriously curtail the student press.

The decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Silverglate warns, “gives administrators unfettered discretion to become in effect the new editors of our nation’s college newspapers.”

Here’s a roundup of coverage compiled by the Student Press Law Center.

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3 thoughts on “The unfree student press”

  1. While you are at it perhaps you could write a chilling column about the high degree of censorship practiced by the various “moderators” aka memory hole operators of most UUA sponsored internet forums and other UU controlled media, including the UU World. . .Hopefully you will have the decency not to censor this post yourself. . .Fortunately UUs do not yet control the Montreal Mirror alternative weekly although it seems that they might exercise some undue influence in other Montreal media such as the Montreal Gazette and Senior Times (not a surprise there really).The following links go to publicly available news reports about a Canadian Unitarian church and it’s intolerant and abusive fundamentalist atheist “humanist” minister. This now retired/resigned UU minister was not guilty of sexual misconduct but committed other serious clergy misconduct which represented a flagrant breach of the UUMA Code of Professional Practices and made a complete mockery of most UU principles. His anti-religious intolerance and related clergy misconduct was and still is tacitly condoned and even effectively endorsed by the Unitarian Church of Montreal, the Canadian Unitarian Council, the UUA under Presidents John Buehrens and William Sinkford and the Ministerial Fellowship Committee under Rev. Diane Miller and others. The Unitarian Church of Montreal is still paying the price for its negligent and effectively complicit non-response to my legitimate grievances. http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/1998/060498/news5.htmlhttp://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/1998/061898/letters.htmlhttp://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/1999/011499/letters.htmlhttp://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/1999/122399/letters.htmlhttp://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2000/120700/news5.htmlhttp://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2000/121400/letters.htmlhttp://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2003/121103/front.htmlJust run a Google search on the Unitarian Church of Montreal and Rev. Ray Drennan for more info. A Google Groups search wouldn’t hurt either. Try “unitarian church”. . . Other search engines such as http://www.alltheweb.com may find some web pages that Google doesn’t index very well. . . My very public “critique” of the Unitarian Church of Montreal and the greater UU religious community’s condoning and effective endorsement of Rev. Ray Drennan’s demeaning and abusive behavior, and of the subsequent injustices and abuses that resulted from the negligent and punitive (towards me that is. . .) responses of the Unitarian Church of Montreal continues.

  2. The McGill Tribune is a very free Montreal university student newspaper in virtually every sense of the word “free”. Last week’s issue of The McGill Tribune published a half-page article on page 2. about how some McGill University students, and the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), were ired” by on-campus proselytizing and recruiting by CRU a student Christian “club”. Most ironically The McGill Tribune copy editors had seen fit to place a quarter page advertisement from the Unitarian Church of Montreal on page 3. . . directly opposite this article that criticized on-campus proselytizing and recruitment by Christians. The advertisement from the Unitarian Church of Montreal was very misleading, at least in terms of my own bitter personal experience with the Unitarian Church of Montreal and its now “retired” fundamentalist atheist minister Rev. Ray Drennan. I thus wrote a letter to the editor about the delicious irony of the placement of the Unitarian Church of Montreals’ recruiting advertisement directly opposite the aforementioned article, and then went on to warn McGill University students about just how misleasding the ad was. Thankfully the editors of The McGill Tribune, which is actually published by the Students’ Society of McGill University, had the moral and editorial integrity to publish my letter to the editor that exposed the highly misleading and even outright false advertising of the Unitarian Church of Montreal in this week’s issue of the McGill Tribune. Bravo McGill Tribune!

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