CAMPUS

Western Oregon University Censured By College Media Advisers

Western Oregon University has been censured by College Media Advisers, a group representing advisers of student-run publications, after the school fired an adviser and disciplined a student journalist for exposing a serious privacy flaw in its computer systems. From the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

The censure was provoked, the CMA said in a written statement, by the university’s heavy-handed response to the newspaper article. As reported in The Chronicle in 2007, a student, Blair W. Loving, wrote an article explaining that he had accidentally stumbled on a computer file with 100 names of applicants to the university’s College of Education, along with their Social Security numbers.

Both the adviser and the student were punished for violating computer-use policy. Of course, any dolt can see the conundrum at work here: If Loving hadn’t “violated” the policy, students’ personal information would still be illegally available for less scrupulous people to obtain. (I guess this is a “letter of the law” vs. “spirit of the law” debate.)

In any case, if WOU is trying to make itself look as bad as possible, mission accomplished. The administration can hide behind its ham-fisted, zero-tolerance policy, but it’s (a) petty and childish and (b) bad for student journalism at large. As FIRE mentions in their post on the matter, California has recently passed a law protecting student journalism advisers from retaliatory actions by universities. Other states might do well to consider similar laws, lest college publications be “chilled” by administrations afraid of getting caught with their pants down.