Hearsay

Heady days are anticipated for budding campus journalists, and their advisers, but are troubling for anxious caretakers of the educational institutions charged with nurturing them.

The governor, though not usually given to making life easier for the secular press, seems to have had a moment of truce for the cloistered scribes of school news. He signed, without clarion clamor, the College Campus Press Act (Senate Bill 729) on the Friday before Labor Day.

Not to get excited. Public Act 95-0580 won't take effect until June 1, 2008, a couple of semesters hence. But it does establish that campus journalism produced primarily by students at a state-sponsored institution of higher learning “is a public forum for expression.”

Whether it is an official campus publication, or a renegade rag, it “is not subject to prior review by public officials” of the institution. The act provides injunctive and declaratory relief, including assessment of attorney fees.

The contention of the institutions, as de facto publishers, has been that profligate utterances published by petulant students can cause damage that may not be mended until years after they have graduated and gone on to more constructive endeavors.

The act speaks to this, allowing that such egregious expression “is neither an expression of campus policy nor speech attributable” to the institution, and it would not subject the institution to legal action.

Further, the act does not prohibit “imposition of discipline for harassment, threats or intimidation … that is not constitutionally protected, including obscenity or incitement.” Rely on the Supreme Court, if time allows, to define what may be “constitutionally protected.”

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 7-4 decision, reversed a finding by a three-judge panel that had upheld the rights of student journalists at Governors State University to publish criticisms of the administration.

Although she is acknowledged as a true-blue defender of First Amendment privileges, doing her duty almost cost Madigan the Sunshine Award that the Society of Professional Journalists presented to her in October 2005. The Chicago chapter prevailed, obviating a convention floor fight.

To a non-lawyer, writing a column for a legal publication seems like burning the midnight oil on a term paper that will be scrutinized by an entire faculty. No grades are posted, but an occasional nod of professorial approbation is heartening.

One such came of late from Joe Gitlin, a Laureate of the ISBA Academy of Lawyers who holds court in Woodstock. His reactions to Hearsay's lament in June for the tragic death of DuPage prosecutor Jane Radostits are worth sharing. Here goes:

“Thanks for reciting ‘Defending the Damned' by Kevin Davis (reviewed in this issue of the Bar News). I assume it was on his writing you based your comment: ‘When it's over, the emotional scar of the battle, for either, can ache for the balm of tippling with kindred spirits.'

“Being closer to five score (as a lawyer) than three score, I leave the trial of cases to the younger members of my firm. But when I was trying cases, even though I may have felt close to physical combat with opposing counsel in the heat of the trial, I would often end the day by ‘tippling' with opposing counsel.

“You quote Barsanti, commenting that the collegial culture of prior times which included working hard and playing hard has gone. This is good and this is bad.

“We decry the loss of collegiality, courtesy and good manners between lawyers. This is bad. Tippling led to settlement of the next case, or maybe this case. I guess we can't have it both ways.”

Thanks, Joe. Times have changed. The new breed of lawyer, struggling to pay off law school debt and log the required quota of billable hours, profits too infrequently from the mentorship of legends like you.

That's bad, too.