Penn State stifles student newspaper, prohibits voter registration in brazen display of rights abuses before general election

Dark clouds are settling over Happy Valley.

This election season, Pennsylvania State University appears to be unleashing its own October Surprise — against its students. In a brazen display of ignorance of (or disdain for) long-settled law, Penn State this semester has trampled over the rights of student journalists and other students registering their classmates to vote. There are times in FIRE’s case work where we can understand the flawed logic that leads an administrator to break the law, but there is no excusing or justifying what has happened on the Penn State campus over the past few weeks. 

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It started with the student newspaper. Thomas Jefferson famously said that he would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers. On Sept. 18, Penn State students got to experience the latter. 

Overnight, Penn State simply absconded with 35 newsstands for its primary student paper, The Daily Collegian, taking away the large, steel racks, along with all the newspapers inside of them. Once Penn State got around to actually telling The Collegian it took the racks, it claimed that having ads on the racks’ poster frame violated two university policies restricting “commercial sales activities.” At the time they were removed, three racks held ads for Kamala Harris, while six others displayed voter registration ads.

It’s time for Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi to explain what went wrong and what she’s going to do to fix it.

Why the sudden and extreme tactic? The racks always had ad space, and the university and paper had been negotiating a new agreement on the ad space since the summer. But if this was just some kind of hardball negotiation tactic, why didn’t Penn State tell The Collegian it was removing the racks? And wouldn’t it make more sense just to remove the ads instead of the newspapers and racks?

As FIRE pointed out, the school’s story wasn’t adding up. 

FIRE condemns Penn State’s removal of student newspapers over Kamala Harris and voter registration ads

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More clues began to roll in when the ACLU of Pennsylvania contacted FIRE about receiving reports from students that their efforts to register voters on campus were being shut down by administrators who told them registering voters on campus was prohibited on that public campus. But it’s not: Penn State’s written policies explicitly say the university protects voter registration efforts. After all, protecting political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment, and while trying to convince people to vote your way is the most obvious example of political speech in a democratic society, not far behind that is convincing them to vote at all.

What in the world is going on at Penn State?

Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline was Monday, so the damage to such efforts has already been done. But if Penn State is willing to restrict expression that’s simply aimed at getting students to vote, what does it have planned for the election itself? 

FIRE and the ACLU of Pennsylvania agree: It’s time for Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi to explain what went wrong and what she’s going to do to fix it. Penn State students, and Pennslvanians generally, have a right to know that their fundamental rights will be safe on election day — and beyond.