Dear President Jones

Dear President Jones:

Please honor the Inkwell staff's freedom of the press rights by restoring the $14,760 that SGA cut in student activity fee funding from our 2008-09 budget.

The reason that Al Harris and SGA say they cut our funding was because we are going to charge for display ads next year. Harris said that they determined that they would need "over $8,000" to "maintain" the same level of advertising in the Inkwell.

The rates we are charging next year range from $25 for a 1/8 page ad to $100 for a full page ad.

The value of SGA and CUB advertising for the past 29 editions only comes up to $577.50 - and that includes an ad that they requested last semester that we forgot to include in the edition so I added the value of a full page ad to the total. Furthermore, the value of SGA, CUB and Student Activities ads since summer of 2005 up till the April 4 edition is less than $2,900.

Their claim that us charging them for display ads next year is the reason they cut our overall budget is a pretext for the real reason they cut the student activity funding. Over 95 percent of the budget hearing consisted of complaints about the content of the newspaper.

"Student government should never be in a position of dictating the content of a student publication, even if the publication's funding comes through student government. The newspaper is just different from the choir or intramurals or the debate team or any other student organization; the newspaper performs a watchdog function, and indeed it often is the only watchdog over student government," said Esquire Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "I would analogize this in the 'real world' to a corporation that pays its independent auditors' fees. The corporation pays for the audit and hires the auditors, but it cannot -- and should not -- be allowed to dictate what the auditors say in their report, or else it's a worthless audit. That's how we got Enron."

Dr. Vicki McNeil did not even look over the report or the supporting documents submitted during the March 18 meeting with McNeil, Dr. Tony Morris and Al Harris. The meeting lasted exactly five minutes. She not only had the responsibility to hear us out as the vice president of student affairs, she had an obligation to "govern" her actions by a respect for freedom of the press as the Student Publications Board policy states.

You are the only one who can correct the situation without a lawsuit. The message you will send by condoning this kind of censorship will prove damning not only to the present and future student journalists on campus and the present and future student government officers but also to the overall student body.

"[I]t would be very dangerous and unhealthy for a university or a student government to be able to punish disfavored content by withholding funding," LoMonte said. "To the extent that your student government felt that they 'got away with' a content-based budgeting decision that would embolden them to link content and funding in the future.

"It should be obvious to anyone with a grade-school civics education that the government covered by a newspaper cannot and should not take action against the newspaper because it disagrees with the way the government is being covered. We would not accept that of Congress or the city council, and we should not accept it on campus either."

The Georgia First Amendment Foundation, Society of Professional Journalists, the First Amendment Center Online and Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) and the Student Press Law Center are supporting us in this endeavor. You should be hearing from several of them in the very near future.

You are the leader of AASU, and the students rely on you to ensure that their First Amendment rights are upheld.

We ask that you please review our evidence and have your legal counsel review it as well so we can move forward without a lawsuit. Download the original attachment

Dear President Jones:

Please honor the Inkwell staff's freedom of the press rights by restoring the $14,760 that SGA cut in student activity fee funding from our 2008-09 budget.

The reason that Al Harris and SGA say they cut our funding was because we are going to charge for display ads next year. Harris said that they determined that they would need "over $8,000" to "maintain" the same level of advertising in the Inkwell.

The rates we are charging next year range from $25 for a 1/8 page ad to $100 for a full page ad.

The value of SGA and CUB advertising for the past 29 editions only comes up to $577.50 - and that includes an ad that they requested last semester that we forgot to include in the edition so I added the value of a full page ad to the total. Furthermore, the value of SGA, CUB and Student Activities ads since summer of 2005 up till the April 4 edition is less than $2,900.

Their claim that us charging them for display ads next year is the reason they cut our overall budget is a pretext for the real reason they cut the student activity funding. Over 95 percent of the budget hearing consisted of complaints about the content of the newspaper.

"Student government should never be in a position of dictating the content of a student publication, even if the publication's funding comes through student government. The newspaper is just different from the choir or intramurals or the debate team or any other student organization; the newspaper performs a watchdog function, and indeed it often is the only watchdog over student government," said Esquire Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "I would analogize this in the 'real world' to a corporation that pays its independent auditors' fees. The corporation pays for the audit and hires the auditors, but it cannot -- and should not -- be allowed to dictate what the auditors say in their report, or else it's a worthless audit. That's how we got Enron."