A University of Montana newspaper is facing censorship after a professor announced intentions to encourage the university to prohibit the publication of the newspaper’s weekly sex column.
“I’m a member of the faculty, and I care about the schools reputation, and in my opinion this particular column is a very low standard and is embarrassingly unprofessional,” said Kristen Juras, assistant law professor at UM.
Juras began her quest to censor senior Bess Davis’ “Bess Sex Column” by writing a letter to the editor of The Kaimin expressing her concern about the column’s content.
The current column is published in the newspaper’s opinion page once a week and discusses topics including sex toys, virginity and Facebook relationships.
“I think what I’m writing is more than appropriate for the audience of a college campus,” Davis said. “I don’t work for a family newspaper. I’m writing for young adults about something young adults care about.”
Upon reading the article, Juras met with the paper’s editor in chief. After discovering no review process existed to censor the paper’s material, she decided to confront the university to discuss guidelines and criteria for choosing topics and possibly implement a process of review.
Juras added the guidelines should include hiring journalists with an expertise in their field.
According to Davis, if the school does not comply to Juras’ request to establish ground rules for the paper and essentially end Davis’ sex column, Juras will take the issue to the board of regents. If the regents fail to comply as well, Juras will bring it before the state Legislature, Davis said.
Since the newspaper runs independently, the school has no editorial control over their columns, according to Davis
“We haven’t committed libel and the column doesn’t break any laws,” Davis said. “I don’t think this is going to go anywhere, but I also didn’t think my column was going to spur controversy.”
According to University of Wisconsin associate law professor Anuj Desai, the students did not violate any laws and should legally be permitted to continue publishing the column.
“As long as she’s not holding herself out to say she’s a psychiatrist or falsely claiming to be someone that she isn’t, then it is fine,” Desai said.
However, Desai said student groups affiliated with the university have to follow certain rules to receive funding, and the Montana paper is subject to obeying such rules.
Desai added he thinks the rules must be neutral in public schools and cannot violate freedom of speech.
“It should be protected by the First Amendment unless they are putting up obscene pictures,” Desai said. “But, if its general advice like wear a condom when you’re doing it or love advice like play hard to get, then there’s no legal problem.”
Desai said the proposed monitoring would not be plausible for UW’s newspapers since both are independent from university funding.
UM’s decision on the topic is still pending. Until then, the sex column will continue to be published.
