Tensions flare over student newspapers and First Amendment rights on campus
Students at the University of Texas at Dallas looking for print editions of The Retrograde might find themselves on a treasure hunt.
The administration granted the newly established independent student newspaper four newsstands on campus. In contrast, The Mercury, the university-supported newspaper, was given 36 slots.
“It’s censorship by access,” said Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, a university student who launched the alternative newspaper last year after school leaders fired him from the Mercury for covering pro-Palestinian protests. He maintains that The Retrograde’s newsstands are located in low-traffic buildings.
Why we wrote this
At least six states are considering legislative proposals that protect student journalists’ First Amendment rights. Over the past year, tensions have emerged at several universities between administrators and student newspapers.
Mr. Olivares Gutierrez sought support from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group, after the administration failed to respond to his requests for increased distribution sites. FIRE urged the university to “strive to fulfill its First Amendment obligations and public commitments to student journalists, without undermining them,” in a Jan. 20 letter offering assistance in revising the university’s policy.
The controversy in Dallas is an example of the growing challenges student journalists face nationwide, from censorship to administrative obstruction to the elimination of print editions. Last October, Indiana University administrators discontinued print editions of the Indiana Daily Student and fired the staff adviser in a dispute over the newspaper’s news coverage.
Rather than grab their notebooks and go home, many student journalists are taking action — recruiting free speech groups, filing lawsuits, or lobbying for state-level legislation to protect their First Amendment rights. Many university administrators, meanwhile, face the Trump administration’s reliance on lawsuits and denial of research funding because of what the White House calls a lack of ideological viewpoints on campuses.
“The last few years have been like no other. You have a commander in chief who says the press is the enemy of the people. If you really want to eliminate the media, you strangle it at the source, and that source is student journalism,” says Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center.
Legal guarantees for student journalists
In some cases, student journalists have been praised for their recent media coverage. The Harvard Crimson, for example, broke the news of Harvard University’s latest investigations into the school’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
More than a third of the nation’s counties lack full-time local journalists, according to a July 2025 Nieman Journalism Lab report. Many places now rely on student journalists to cover town halls, school boards and state governments. Student journalists make up 9% of journalists in the state capital, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.
At the same time, many student newspapers rely on funding from their schools. A February 2024 study by University of Florida researchers found that at least 56% of student newspapers receive some form of funding from their college or university.
Public and private universities are pressuring student journalists in an effort to satisfy donors and avoid antagonizing the Trump administration, says Jenna Leventoff, senior policy adviser for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Universities…are asking themselves, ‘Do I want my funding to stay intact? Or do I want to support the journal?'” Ms. Leventoff adds.
These points of tension are why stronger legal protections for student journalism are needed, free speech advocates say. And one of the best ways to do that, they suggest, is to pass state laws designed to protect students’ press freedoms.
Since the late 1980s, 18 states have passed laws known as “New Voices” laws that support student press rights, according to the Student Press Law Center.
This year, New Voices’ legislative efforts include proposals in Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Utah.
The New Voices movement emerged in response to the decision in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier to the Supreme Court in 1988, which allowed school officials to block the publication of certain articles in the school newspaper. Some First Amendment lawyers argue that the decision undermined the landmark free speech case Tinker v. Des Moines. That 1969 decision concluded that students and teachers do not “give up their constitutional rights to free speech or expression at the schoolhouse door.”
Office of New York Senator Brian Kavanagh
“New Voices takes us back to the Tinker standard, which allows censorship of student-run media only in narrowly defined, legally justified circumstances,” says Mr. Hiestand of the Student Press Law Center.
Current laws vary by state. Some, like Virginia’s, apply only to students. Most provide protections for editorial independence, including safeguards for faculty advisors so that they are safe from retaliation if they refuse to censor student work.
Clashes on campus
Mr. Olivares Gutierrez, who hopes to see the New Voices legislation passed in Texas, remains energetic while awaiting a response from the University of Texas at Dallas regarding newsstand placement. (Le Rétrograde also publishes online.)
Before launching The Retrograde, the political science and philosophy student was editor-in-chief of the university newspaper The Mercury. According to Mr. Olivares Gutierrez’s account, university administrators fired him in September 2024 because of the newspaper’s coverage of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and allegations that he violated student publications’ bylaws.
While Mr. Olivares Gutierrez was editor, the Mercury’s reporting raised questions about whether the university was right to use state troopers to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus and arrest 21 people.
The newspaper also published an interview with an arrested art history professor. Afterward, a university administrator told Mr. Olivares Gutierrez in a meeting that he and the paper’s student editor had engaged in “journalistic malpractice,” he said.
A staff strike ensues.
The following semester, Mr. Olivares Gutierrez and his colleagues founded The Retrograde, a completely independent newspaper. When it launched in January 2025, all 36 student members of The Mercury joined.
The University of Texas at Dallas declined to comment on The Retrograde’s efforts to increase distribution sites. A spokesperson said in a written statement that The Mercury “has resumed publication with student journalists. The University of Texas at Dallas is committed to providing these students with professional journalism experience in a manner consistent with applicable state and federal laws.”
“It’s a crazy situation, but it’s critical that we do this,” Mr. Olivares Gutierrez said. “We constantly talk about this as a problem that’s bigger than us. Journalists are under existential threat on campus and across the country.”
Echoes of the Texas dispute emerged in Indiana last fall. Indiana University administrators announced in October that print editions of the Indiana Daily Student would be discontinued for the remainder of the academic year.
Leaders of the university’s media school released a business plan that called for reducing print production and limiting some editions to special issue coverage without news. Jim Rodenbush, a staff member and director of student media at the paper, refused to remove news content planned for the special Homecoming edition.
Print editions of the student newspaper resumed last November after a tidal wave of negative reactions from students, alumni and journalists. Mr. Rodenbush, however, remains unemployed.
“It became harder and harder to do my job,” Mr. Rodenbush said, describing the pressure to avoid controversial topics and make “as little noise as possible to outsiders.”
Mr. Rodenbush was fired because his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the student media plan is unacceptable,” according to a letter from the dean of the Media School obtained by IndyStar.
A test case in California
A recent test of California’s New Voices law resulted in the reinstatement of Eric Gustafson as media advisor at Lowell High School in San Francisco.
In January, a state court ruled that the school violated the law when administrators reassigned Mr. Gustafson because of controversial stories. These included articles about student drug use and reports of sexual harassment by teachers.
“It was very clear that what was happening was censorship, even though that wasn’t the intention,” says Gustafson, who notes that the principal began reviewing students’ stories. “Here we are in liberal San Francisco, and it was old-fashioned bullying.”
The ruling is the first known test of California’s advisor protection provision since it was enacted in 2009.
In New York, Democratic Senator Brian Kavanagh has repeatedly introduced New Voices legislation. It stalls on every attempt. Mr. Kavanaugh reintroduced it this legislative session. If passed, it would protect student expression in high schools, except in certain cases, such as defamation. He attributes the bill’s failure largely to political pressure from school administrators.
“In my experience, most of those who oppose an independent student newspaper generally value journalism in society, but they face strong pressure from various stakeholders in their community, from parents to teachers,” he says.
