OREGON -- Lawyers for The Liberty, an independent publication at
Oregon State University, filed a motion for reconsideration after a judge ruled in
favor of the university in a lawsuit filed by the paper.
The motion to reconsider was filed Monday contesting the judge's
February 22 ruling on the original suit, which was filed after the university
removed the Liberty's affixed newspaper bins from campus last year.
The bins for another student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, remained in
place and the Liberty viewed this as censorship. The university, however,
said its problem was with the bins, not the papers.
"We had a policy governing fixed distribution bins. In other words,
the bins that are somehow affixed to the concrete or fastened to something else
that makes them immobile," Todd Simmons, an Oregon State University
spokesperson, said.
Though lawyers for the Liberty filed a motion for immediate relief,
which would have required the university to allow the newspaper to again be
distributed on campus, it was withdrawn after the university amended its fixed
bin policy and allowed the paper to distribute again, said Heather Gebelin
Hacker, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund representing the
Liberty.
"That was really good for the students because that was obviously
our primary concern upon filing the case was making sure they got their voice
back on campus," Hacker said.
The motion for reconsideration was filed, despite the policy change,
because they want the court to reconsider its decisions.
"In this case they did get their bins on campus, which is good, but
they also need to have assurance that this is not going to happen again in the
future and right now they don't have that ... There was no ruling by the
court that this action by the university violated their constitutional rights,
which is important not only to them but also to any student on campus,
especially the student media," Hacker said. "It's sort of a
scary thought to think that the university could just decide that any paper
other than their daily student newspaper, any of the alternative papers, could
just be tossed off campus."
The university, however, is pleased with the ruling in its favor finding
that there was no discrimination based on newspaper content.
"The other issue that I think was much more important to us as an
institution that celebrates free speech and open discourse on campus was the
finding ... that in this case there was no basis for a claim of discrimination
based on political point of view or ideology," Simmons said. "So all
of that was completely dismissed and we were very glad to see our point
reinforced by the judge in this case."
By Katie Maloney, SPLC staff writer