A faculty adviser for Indiana University's student newspaper filed a federal lawsuit Thursday arguing his free speech and due process rights were violated when he was fired for refusing to ensure no news stories appeared in the homecoming print edition earlier this month.
A lawyer for the adviser, Jim Rodenbush, said it's a case seeking “to have a court state that the First Amendment still matters.”
Rodenbush, in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of Indiana, seeks reinstatement to his job and monetary damages. He was dismissed Oct. 14 for his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university's direction for the Student Media Plan," according to David Tolchinsky, dean of the university's media school, who also ended the newspaper's print product.
“The question is if a university doesn't like the content of the student newspaper, can it simply pull the plug on the student newspaper,” Rodenbush's attorney, Jonathan Little, said.
Phone and email messages were left for university spokespersons. The school issued a statement earlier saying it was shifting publication from print to digital platforms for educational and financial purposes, while the chancellor said in a statement that “free expression and editorial independence” were unfettered.
Subsidized by $250,000 a year because of dwindling ad revenue, The Daily Student, regularly honored as among the nation's best collegiate news organizations, had its weekly print editions reduced to seven special sections a year. Rodenbush said this fall, administrators questioned why the special sections still had hard news content.
Rodenbush told Tolchinsky editorial decisions belonged to the student staff alone before Tolchinsky fired him and terminated future print editions.
The dismissal came days before the scheduled publication of the paper's homecoming edition, which would have greeted tens of thousands of alumni returning to Bloomington to celebrate the undefeated Hoosiers football team, currently ranked No. 2 nationally.
“In a direct assault on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, IU fired James Rodenbush when he refused the directive to censor student work in the campus newspaper and print only fluff pieces about the upcoming homecoming festivities,” the complaint reads.
