Tes Mehring
Discussions of proposed reassigned teaching loads could result in the elimination of The Sunflower, the campus yearbook, as a student-run publication.
“I raised the question with the interim department chair to see if we could create a course that students would enroll in so that (advising) could be a teaching-related kind of a function because that’s really what we’ve been instructed to do,” said Provost Teresa Mehring.
This conversation occurred after the fall 2008 Legislative Post Audit, which compared teaching loads of the six Regents Institutions, among other things. The audit showed Emporia State as having the highest reassigned teaching loads of any institution and the Kansas Board of Regents challenged the university to lower it.
“It makes us stand out in a very negative fashion and it makes us an easy target when it comes to budget kinds of decisions,” Mehring said.
A reassigned teaching load means that a professor is given time apart from teaching for research, advising or other things of that nature.
One such position is held by Tom Winski, who has an eighth of his job designated to advising The Sunflower. The proposed reassignments did not have his position as adviser listed. Instead, there has been discussion of yearbook as a class.
“There’re a lot of issues that need to be considered, not the least of which is if The Sunflower is a class and as instructor I’m supposed to give a grade, that conflicts with The Sunflower being an independent student publication,” Winski said. “There would be a perception that I would read through and grade things before-hand, which is a violation of student rights.”
Winski said, as proposed, the yearbook staff positions would remain paid student jobs. Lindsey Gentry, Editor-in-Chief of The Sunflower and senior business management major, said this could pose a problem in funding the publication, which currently runs on a budget of $90,000.
“I’m afraid of our funding being cut completely because if we’re considered a class and they’re already cutting things on the academic side, I don’t know how we’d have enough money if we didn’t have the support of Associated Student Government funding,” Gentry said.
In addition, if The Sunflower had an instructor rather than adviser, Winski said the instructor, not the Editor-in-Chief, would control the publication. This would allow for prior review and ultimately censorship, which is strictly prohibited in the College Media Adviser’s Code of Ethics, the recognized professional standard of conduct for advisers.
“Faculty, staff and other non-students who assume advisory roles with student media must remain aware of their obligation to defend and teach without censoring, editing, directing or producing,” the document says.
Article II of the Student Media Board Constitution, the governing document for the board and The Sunflower, reinstates this idea:
“The editors and managers of the student media are free to develop their own editorial policies and news coverage or content.”
But Marie Miller, Department of English, Modern Languages and Journalism interim chair, said that after talking to Winski yesterday, she realized yearbook as a class is not plausible.
“After I proposed this to Winski I learned it would not be possible because The Sunflower is a student publication and is funded by ASG and that it would not be appropriate to have class for this,” Miller said. “We will not have it as a course, we will have an adviser to the Sunflower not in a class situation. It will operate the same way it does now.”
But at an open forum yesterday evening, Mehring said yearbook as a class is still being considered. The first forum was on Tuesday, the second yesterday and the third was held after press time today.
Winski said communication could clear up confusion.
“I trust and hope that people making final decisions will listen to what people have to say and the law,” Winski said. “Whether it’s going to be a independent publication depends on whether they want it to be a student publication and the voice of the students or a publication of the English department.”
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Why can’t the Sunflower be offered as a class? Can the instructor not grade for things like photo composition skills, page layout and design skills, headline and caption writing skills, without censoring?
Because if the advisor becomes a teacher, the independent aspect is lost and the university then has the authority to make content decisions and to force the teacher to enforce those decisions or face a reprimand. It violates the first amendment as has been proven in every other case like this that has been taken to court. If the university has already established The Sunflower as an independent publication and as an open forum (which it has done by allowing it to be publicly funded and run under the constitution of the media boar) and it now takes away that open forum, it could face serious legal consequences related to the first amendment. The administration at ESU needs to get caught up to date on student media law because there have been serious problems between the administration and different student publications because the administration does not seem to understand the legal aspects of student media. These problems could be easily resolved by doing just a little bit of research, but the administration is too lazy to take the time to look up a simple precedent case to determine if what they’re attempting to do is legal.
I should add, for more information on this type of matter, you can simply look up the court case Kincaid vs. Gibson. It will explain everything about why this is wrong.
I’m really not sure too many students would be upset if the Sunflower wasn’t published anymore. It full of so many errors every single year that it’s become an embarrassment to the entire University. It is anything but a professional publication. I honestly do not understand how an average student can pick out at least a dozen errors within 5-10 minutes of picking up a copy but so called “editors” allow student fees to be wasted on inaccurate garbage.
Sasna,
Based upon your response, if law forbids the advisor from having any say about the publication, then what exactly does the advisor do and why does it even require ANY load? Sounds like service to the campus community to me, similar to being a recognized student organization/club advisor.
That’s exactly what it is. This just goes to show how ignorant the campus community is about student media. The student media groups at ESU ARE RSOs and the role of the adviser basically is that of an RSO advisor. However, it does go a step further because that adviser also serves in a capacity of consultant/legal adviser. He or she can provide input on the publication, but legally cannot “force” student media to comply with that input. The adviser is also a sort of financial manager for the publications in that they ensure that the financial transactions are ethical and legal. Although the adviser cannot tell the publications how they can spend money, the adviser does serve as a go-between between the publication and the university fiscal affairs office. They also serve as a post-publication critic for the publications so that these organizations can improve from that input (although lately this criticism hasn’t been taken for improvement). It is a position that requires a workload because there are many facets of the position that require a great deal of time.
Thank you for shedding some light on this topic. I appreciate the professionalism you displayed and your thoughtful responses during our back and forth discussion.