Opinion ID: 1426237
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Events Giving Rise to the Lawsuit

Text: The school newspaper at issue was produced by students at the College of Staten Island (CSI or the College), which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Under state law, the CUNY Board of Trustees (the CUNY Board) may impose mandatory student activity fees to support student activities and regulate the expenditure of those funds. At all times relevant to this lawsuit, CSI students, as a condition for registering for classes, were required to pay mandatory student activity fees in an amount set by the CUNY Board. At CSI, a portion of the student activity fees is earmarked for a general fund to be allocated by the CSI student government to several extracurricular activities, including student publications. The CUNY Board of Trustees Bylaws (CUNY Bylaws) mandate that CSI establish a Student Elections Review Committee (SERC), which, among other responsibilities, approves election procedures and certifies election results. CUNY By-law § 15.2[d]. During a student government election, the SERC meets when needed to consider alleged violations of election rules and other complaints regarding the election process. The student government nominates individuals, who may be students, faculty, or administrative staff, to serve on the SERC. From those nominees, the CSI president appoints the members of the SERC. The intent of Bylaw § 15.2[d] is to limit the role of college presidents to receiving appeals from the Student Elections Review Committee where an individual student has received a negative determination on a request. On appeal, the CSI president may uphold, reverse, or modify the SERC's determination. Each spring, CSI holds annual elections for the Student Senate, as well as for other student government positions. Once elected, the CSI Student Senate in turn names a president and eight commissioners from among its members. One of the commissioners chairs a Committee on Publications that is responsible for regulating student media outlets. In the 1996-1997 academic year, the allocation of student activity fees to student publications was made by the Student Senate based on the recommendation of the Committee on Publications.
CSI allocates student activity fees to fund a number of student publications, including the one at issue in this litigation, the College Voice. The College Voice is a student newspaper and political journal that is primarily paid for from student activity fees. [1] The College Voice publishes articles and editorials on a wide range of topics, including pieces on CSI, CUNY, local, national, and international affairs, reviews, and poetry. The editors of the College Voice choose the material that the newspaper publishes without any supervision or prior review by anyone other than the editors and staff of the newspaper. (The newspaper has a faculty advisor who does not review or approve articles prior to publication.) Participation in the College Voice is entirely extracurricular, and the editors and staff do not receive any academic credit for working on the newspaper. In addition to the College Voice, CSI also funds a college radio station and other student media outlets using the student activity fees. The other outlets include the Banner, which the student government designated the official campus newspaper, a literary magazine named The Third Rail, and various other publications. CUNY and CSI have not placed any restrictions on the subjects that may be covered in the College Voice or the Banner. [2] These newspapers are not prohibited from publishing articles or editorials expressing opinions or endorsing candidates in student elections. There is no rule or regulation prohibiting or restricting the editors or staff members of the College Voice, or other publications, from running for student government positions or from endorsing themselves. According to the plaintiffs' complaint, in the early 1990s the College Voice was designated the official college newspaper of CSI. Several years before the Spring 1997 election, the editors of the College Voice began publishing articles that reflected a generally left-wing perspective on campus, local, national, and international political issues. Many of the articles and editorials were critical of CUNY and CSI administration officials. These positions prompted some students, who disagreed with the College Voice 's editorial policy, to form a second student newspaper at CSI called the Banner. The CSI Student Government subsequently revoked College Voice 's designation as the official CSI student newspaper and gave that status to the Banner. In Spring 1997, the Banner was the official CSI student newspaper.

In the Fall 1996 term, some CSI students concerned about various student life issues at CSI and CUNY began meeting and formed an organization they called the Student Union. During the student government elections in the Spring 1997 semester, the Student Union ran a slate of candidates for a total of 37 positions in the Student Senate and other governing organizations. Several editors and staff members of the College Voice, including some of the plaintiffs, were among the candidates running on the Student Union slate. The only opposing slate was Students for Students (SFS), which was composed mainly of incumbent members of the Student Senate seeking re-election. Almost all of the candidates in the Spring 1997 election were affiliated with either the Student Union or SFS slates. The Spring 1997 student government election at CSI was scheduled to take place between April 30 and May 3, 1997. Before the election, CSI's SERC approved eight election rules. Two of those rules are at issue in this litigation. Rule 2 provided: The campus newspaper may not be used as posters on walls, bulletin boards, etc. and may not be used as a means to distribute campaign flyers. Rule 5 stated: The Student Government will be glad to make you 30 copies of your stamped and approved poster or flyer. All candidates must remove their election materials from the designated areas after the election is over.
Prior to the Spring 1997 election, the College Voice decided to endorse the Student Union slate. [3] By agreement within the College Voice editorial board, the decision about whether or not to endorse candidates, which candidates to endorse if the newspaper decided to do so, and what content to run in the issue was to be made by the members of the board that were not candidates in the Spring 1997 election. The College Voice chose to publish a special election issue that the editors intended to have distributed on April 28, 1997, two days before the beginning of the voting period. [4] The timing was a significant aspect of the College Voice 's message. An editor of the College Voice explained, an important part [of publication] is not just the content of the newspaper, but timing and placement. And we felt that the timing a few days before the election would be the most opportune time to influence the election. The May 1997 issue of the College Voice consisted of twenty-eight pages. The front page displayed a group photograph of twelve of the candidates running on the Student Union slate under a bold headline, VOTE STUDENT UNION! The rear cover of the newspaper featured only the Student Union's twelve-point platform. Page two of the issue contained an editorial entitled Vote Student Union. Various candidates' platform statements were printed on pages six and seven. The issue also included two articles by two of the plaintiffs criticizing the incumbent members of the student government who were running on the SFS slate, and two articles, one by a plaintiff and the other by a non-plaintiff, criticizing the CUNY chancellor. The remainder of the issue was devoted to articles on a wide variety of other matters, including pieces on international affairs, a New York City mayoral candidate forum, a work requirement for students receiving public assistance, campus security, the history of CUNY, the CUNY faculty union, and tenants' rights. It also included music reviews and poetry. The Banner also published an election issue prior to the May 1997 election that included platform statements from candidates running on both the Student Union and the SFS slates.
On April 28, 1997, the editors of the College Voice were informed by a representative at their printer that, although the issue had been printed and was ready for delivery, Student Government Publications Commissioner Juergen Schnetzer had directed the printer not to release the issue. Schnetzer was running for re-election on the SFS slate. On April 29, the attorney for the College Voice editors faxed a letter to CSI President Marlene Springer informing her that student government officials had directed the printer to impound the issue and requesting that she order the immediate release of the newspaper. The letter was copied to various other individuals, including CSI Vice President for Student Affairs Carol Jackson and Student Government President Joseph Canale. President Springer consulted with Vice President Jackson and directed Jackson to ensure that the newspaper be released from the printer. Jackson spoke with both Canale and Schnetzer, but Schnetzer refused to rescind his order impounding the issue. Later that day (April 29), the Student Senate met in closed session to consider the administration's request to override Schnetzer's decision. The Student Senate refused to overrule the impound order. Immediately following the Student Senate meeting, Vice President Jackson informed Canale that President Springer was overriding the Student Senate's decision and that the newspaper would be delivered to the CSI campus. Jackson directed college employees to retrieve the newspapers from the printer and bring them to campus, which they did later that afternoon. After the College Voice was delivered to campus, Andre Woods, an incumbent member of the Student Senate running for re-election on the SFS slate, filed a complaint with the SERC. His complaint alleged that the May 1997 issue of the College Voice violated Election Rule 2, which provided that [t]he campus newspaper may not be used as posters on walls, bulletin boards, etc. and may not be used as a means to distribute campaign flyers. Woods requested that any candidate found in that aforementioned issue of the College Voice by any means such as a Platform Statement or otherwise be disqualified from the ongoing elections. The SERC considered Woods's complaint regarding the alleged Rule 2 violations at a meeting on April 30, 1997, and declined to sustain it. But the SERC passed a resolution declaring that [t]he College Voice used student activity fee funds allocated to promote the election of particular candidates affiliated with the College Voice  and adjourned until the next day to consider further action on the complaint. On May 1, the SERC met again and passed a motion to postpone the election and to consider those ballots cast null and void as it is the committee's decision that the electoral process had been compromised beyond its ability to be fair to all candidates. The polls were closed for approximately two-and-a-half hours until President Springer ordered that they be reopened (after receiving a faxed appeal from plaintiffs' attorney and hearing protests from students who arrived at her office). She declared that she would rule on all election appeals after the election had concluded on May 3. President Springer directed Vice President Jackson to preserve the election results in case she reversed the SERC's determination on appeal. Springer set a deadline of May 5, 1997 for students to submit appeals from the SERC determination. Her office received a number of submissions from students, including an appeal from the plaintiffs' lawyer and letters from other students in support of and in opposition to the SERC's determination.
On May 6, 1997, President Springer issued a memorandum announcing her decision to affirm the SERC's nullification of the election because of the contents of the May 1997 issue of the College Voice. The memorandum stated in relevant part: The College Voice inappropriately used student activity fee funds to publish and distribute approximately five thousand copies of a twenty-eight page issue of the College Voice with a cover boldly encouraging a vote for a particular slate of candidates, some of whom are also staff members of the College Voice. Moreover, much of the issue was substantially devoted to supporting the endorsed slate of candidates. I find that this issue amounted to a thinly veiled student activity fee funded piece of campaign literature for the Student Union slate. As a result, the electoral process was compromised beyond its ability to be fair to all candidates, as argued by other candidates who requested nullification of the election. The April 30th to May 3rd election is therefore declared null and void, and a new election scheduled for the period Thursday May 8th, 1997 through Friday, May 16, 1997. President Springer testified that, in making her decision, the only election rules adopted by the SERC that she relied on were Rules 2 and 5. The defendants, however, agree that candidates and slates were allowed, at their own expense, to post and distribute additional materials beyond the thirty posters or flyers paid for by the student government. They further concede that, during the Spring 1997 campaign, both slates and some individual candidates printed their own literature and that this was not a violation of Rule 5. They also agree that Rule 5 was not a restriction on the content of newspapers. President Springer further testified that, in making her decision, she also relied on a non-election rule. This rule, although not part of the eight rules expressly adopted by the SERC prior to the election, was printed on the nomination form for candidates in the Spring 1997 student elections. It stated: All candidates are REQUIRED to submit platform statements for each seat they are running for. Platform statements should be no less than 50 words and no more than 100 words per statement. Statements will be published in the campus newspaper. Statements must be typed or submitted on disk and will not be edited, so be sure you represent yourself clearly and concisely. Deadline for submission of statements is April 21, 1997. I am aware of the guidelines regarding platform statements and am aware that failure to submit statements for each seat for which I am running for will result in my disqualification as a candidate. The rule's reference to the publication of candidate platform statements applied only to the Banner, as the official campus newspaper, and not to the College Voice or other CSI student publications. The student government regularly submitted candidate platform statements to the Banner but did not submit the statements to the College Voice. This practice continued during the Spring 1997 election campaign, in the course of which the student government submitted the candidates' statements to the Banner. The Banner published the statements in its May 1, 1997 edition. The day after President Springer nullified the election, the votes that had been cast were counted. The Student Union had won all thirty-seven positions for which the slate ran candidates. The Student Union candidates also won all thirty-seven positions for which they ran in the second election that was held from May 8 to May 16, 1997.
After President Springer's decision, the members of the College Voice considered removing every copy of the May 1997 issue from campus before the second election in order to avoid angering the administration. In elections held in subsequent years, the College Voice reduced its coverage of the elections because, as an editorial board member explained, it recognize[d] that our endorsement could be a `kiss of death' for candidates we support because if President Springer or the [SERC] disapprove of our election coverage, they may cancel the election or take some other action, such as disqualifying a candidate or a slate who we prominently endorse, or prohibiting the publication or funding of our newspaper. Indeed, in Spring 1998, candidates from the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA), many of whom were members of the College Voice or worked with the College Voice on common political goals, expressed concern about the College Voice endorsing them because of the candidates' fear that an endorsement could lead the administration to cancel once again the election or disqualify PSA candidates. In order to prevent that outcome, the College Voice editors decided to give their endorsement of the PSA less prominence than the newspaper's endorsement of the Student Union slate had received in Spring 1997.