The Minnesota Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Tatro v. University of Minnesota tomorrow morning, a case which addresses the question of how much power universities should have to punish students for speech posted online, and off campus. (I wrote about it in the Silha Bulletin last summer.)
The case arose in 2010 following a series of Facebook posts by Amanda Tatro, a student in the U’s Mortuary Science program. Depending on who you ask, the posts were satirical, creepy, or threatening. After law enforcement officials found that the posts could not lead to criminal charges, university officials launched a disciplinary proceeding anyway. Tatro was placed on academic probation and the school required her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in order to return to classes. The school’s central justification for the punishment was that Tatro’s posts threatened funding for the program by making it look bad.
Think about that for a second. The school is arguing that it should have the power to punish students who speak off-campus when their speech might make the institution look bad, because it might make donors queasy.
If you’re still not getting it, Frank LoMonte, Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center (where I used to work) explains the stakes pretty well in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
“If speech loses its First Amendment protection because it causes so many grantors to withdraw their support that a program’s viability is threatened, which is the legal standard that the university is asking the court to adopt in the Tatro case, then no student may ever feel safe, in any venue, blowing the whistle on wrongdoing.”
It’s an excellent commentary, and you should read the whole thing.
I’ll try to post my take on the oral arguments here tomorrow or Thursday.
