Student Paper Budget Cuts Lead to Lawsuit

Student editors at the Inkwell, the newspaper at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Ga., are suing the university and its student government, saying the school cut the paper's budget after it published several articles critical of the administration, the Student Press Law Center reports.

"The budget reduction imposed on the Inkwell was greatly disproportionate, both in dollar and in percentage terms, to the reduction imposed on any other student organization," reads the lawsuit. "Almost all other organizations funded through the SGA other than the Inkwell received either an increase or flat-level budget for 2008-09."

The group's budget was cut almost $15,000, a 27 percent reduction from last year—a move that the plaintiffs say stifles students' free speech rights.

Among the list of unflattering articles: an interview with a student activities assistant director who was not "approved" beforehand and a story about the school's problems reporting crimes to federal authorities. According to the suit, the student police officer who was interviewed for the latter story also sat on the student government committee that determined the paper's budget the next day, and at that meeting, committee members discussed their grievances of the paper's content, then voted to limit its budget for the following year.

The university declined to comment to the SPLC about the lawsuit.