The First Amendment. It tells us that we all have the freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble, and the freedom to print whatever we want, whenever we want about whomever we want.

This guarantor of expression caused a huge rift between our founding political parties, the Federalists and the Jeffersonians, the former of which didn’t feel the Bill of Rights was necessary.

The First Amendment came between the people and the government more than 200 years ago, and now it comes between us again, this time in the form of censorship of student media.

On Sept. 8, the sixth circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the decision made in Kincaid vs. Gibson, condoning Kentucky State University officials’ censorship and confiscation of 2,000 student yearbooks. The university also demoted the student newspaper’s faculty adviser to a secretarial position after she refused to censor a letter to the editor criticizing the school.

This kind of action is no doubt scary, but what’s scarier is the frequency at which this kind of breech of First Amendment rights is occurring.

The U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision not only affects all student media in Kentucky, but it also could hurt the other states in the sixth circuit — Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

Giving universities the right to keep student media from printing anything critical, particularly about the university, is setting a horrifying precedent.

Although the verdict in this case won’t directly affect student media at Iowa State, it most certainly could some day. If the Daily could no longer be a forum for students, faculty and staff to learn about the goings on at ISU, both good and bad, corruption could occur among the administration and no one would be able to stop it.

No one likes to be the subject of bad news for thousands of people to read about, but there is no stopping the truth from getting out.

The Kentucky State administrators confiscated the school’s 1993-1994 yearbook because they were unhappy it was purple and not the school colors. They also didn’t like the inclusion of a current events section, and said there was a general lack of quality, according to the Student Press Law Center.

Citing a 1988 Supreme Court decision upholding a high school principal’s censorship of his school’s student newspaper, the judge in the Kincaid case ruled the Kentucky administrators’ rationale was reasonable.

Who cares if the yearbook was poorly done, and who cares if it was purple?

College media have had similar First Amendment protection to commercial news media for 30 years, until this case.

And until Sept. 9, the Daily and other local media have enjoyed the freedom to report on anything going on with the Government of the Student Body and the Inter-Residence Hall Association.

The decision made by GSB senators Wednesday night is almost as frightening as the Kentucky decision because it affects ISU students on a local level.

GSB and IRHA formed a committee to investigate Department of Residence spending, but the bill didn’t pass through the GSB senate without a hitch.

Michel Pogge, off campus council, proposed an amendment requiring all committee members to refrain from talking to any media about their findings.

The committee will issue monthly reports on its progress and, thanks to the Iowa Open Meetings, Open Records laws, allow media to sit in on meetings.

However, no one will hear any personal reactions to findings or any further insight on what the residence department is doing.

Wait a minute … this situation sounds familiar.

The point of the committee was to dig deeper into the DOR’s spending because GSB and IRHA members felt the department wasn’t communicating well enough with students.

Utter hypocrisy.

Now GSB and IRHA are committing the same act that made them angry with the residence department for in the first place.

The committee has the right to refuse comment, but the fact that the amendment passed with such ease and little opposition is a sure sign that people don’t understand how important freedom of the press is.

What would our paper be like without criticism of the alcohol-free Veishea? How would the GSB/IRHA committee know the DOR has been avoiding comment if there was no free press to give comment to?

The world will go on, and the Daily will continue to be a public forum for the Iowa State community. But the precedent GSB and IRHA are setting will only encourage future groups to deny comment, and only lead to doubt from the students they serve.

These two student government organizations are intended to protect the students from the administration by being their direct line of action, but no one would know a thing about what goes on in GSB if the Daily didn’t give it press every week.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, GSB. Don’t turn your back on your greatest ally.

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Carrie Tett is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Ames. She is news editor and beat coordinator for the Daily.