The Board of Regents at the University of Maryland voted last week to defy a legislative order from the state of Maryland by refusing to adopt a new university policy regarding the screening of pornographic films on campus.
The board voted down the policy, saying it would be difficult to enforce and contradictory to the First Amendment right to free speech.
UMD faculty and students have been debating this topic since April when Sen. Andrew Harris, R-Baltimore and Harford counties, threatened to pull UMD funding when the student union attempted to screen the porn film “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge” on campus, The Eagle previously reported.
The state legislature had given UMD and Maryland’s 11 other public colleges and universities until Dec. 1 to come up with policies restricting porn screening on campus, The Eagle previously reported.
Students see the Regents’ decision as a victory, according to UMD’s Student Government Association President, Steve Glickman. He told UMD’s student paper The Diamondback that a film regulation policy would affect the larger issue of students’ right to screen films for entertainment without needing the administration’s approval.
No other public university in the country has a policy regulating the screening of pornography or any film on campus, according to Robert O’Neil, the founding director of The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression and former president of the University of Virginia.
O’Neil said the University System of Maryland asked him to offer guidance for UMD’s response to the Maryland legislative mandate.
While UMD would be the first university to adopt this policy, “a responsive policy could have been framed that would have avoided major First Amendment problems,” O’Neil said in an e-mail. “The Regents seem to have concluded that such action will not be necessary.”
If a policy was approved, it would most likely need a panel to review every film to be shown on campus, which the university deemed infeasible, according to The Washington Post.
AU does not have a policy in place concerning the screening of pornography, which has been shown on campus before — most recently, eight years ago, The Eagle previously reported.
However, should AU create such a policy, it would not necessarily be legally constrained by the First Amendment, according to O’Neil.
“AU’s ... independent status would avoid First Amendment concerns...only government is bound by such constraints,” O’Neil said in the e-mail.
Despite their relative autonomy, “major private universities pride themselves on voluntarily observing standards in regard to speech and press that their public counterparts are compelled to observe,” O’Neil said.
You can reach this staff writer at mfowler@theeagleonline.com.
