Clash of schools, blogs raises free-speech issues

Butler sues student; district responds to teacher’s allegations

A college student and a high school teacher may have pushed the limits of cyber-commentary by lashing out at their schools via the Internet.

Butler University is suing Jess Zimmerman, alleging libel and defamation. Beth Guthrie’s Web criticisms have caused such an uproar that Lawrence Township Schools Superintendent Concetta Raimondi has posted a response on the district’s Web site.

The cases have sparked a debate over freedom of speech on the Internet. How far can you go? When does criticism become language that harms reputations?

“We all need institutions to make it much clearer to students and employees that they will sue or that there are legal consequences to saying things on a blog or a Web site,” said Don Bates, an instructor in strategic public relations at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

“I agree, there’s free speech, but then again, common law — defamation, invasion of privacy, liability — those rules always applied prior to blogging,” said Bates, who has studied laws on the subject.

Butler sued Zimmerman, a 21-year-old junior, earlier this year after he posted — on his “TrueBU Blog” — what it claims were defamatory and libelous remarks about two administrators involved in the removal of the student’s stepmother, Andrea Gullickson, as chair of the School of Music. She still teaches at the university.

The lawsuit became public this week in the pages of the campus newspaper.

“I saw (the removal) as an injustice, and I realized I had this vehicle, this blog, and I might as well write about it,” said Zimmerman, a political science major who wants to go to law school.

Initially, his anonymous criticisms drew few readers (150 hits on a good day), but as he e-mailed friends and posted links, the readership grew. His angry posts began to draw comments from readers, most of them connected to the small campus community.

In the lawsuit, Butler said the comments harmed the reputations of Butler Provost Jamie Comstock and Fine Arts Dean Peter Alexander. Specifically, the university claims 11 posts from Oct. 14, 2008, to Jan. 1, 2009, contained defamatory statements.

Zimmerman said he took the site down the first week of January. But he recently started a new blog to address the allegations made against him in the lawsuit, all of which he denies. The new blog, akadoe.blogspot .com, is getting up to 2,000 hits a day, Zimmerman said.

Michael Blosser, a senior from St. Louis who lives in the same fraternity as Zimmerman, said that if nothing else, the blog served to spark discussion among students.

“The Butler student body seems to be fairly apathetic about issues,” Blosser said. “Jess’ blog may have had some angry overtones to it, but nothing in it is close to being considered libel, defamation and threatening. He disagreed with decisions . . . and while he probably shouldn’t have done it anonymously, he did it honestly and without harmful intent.”

Adam Kissel, who monitors student speech issues for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said this is the first case of a university suing a student over online speech.

“More universities are starting to police online speech even when it’s off campus,” Kissel said. “Universities are finding a lot of speech that used to be private that is now in the public eye. And (they) are not comfortable with public criticism.”

He thinks the Butler lawsuit is short-sighted.

Butler English Professor Bill Watts agrees and came to the defense of the blog in a letter published by the Butler Collegian student newspaper.

“They are statements of opinion,” Watts wrote. “They may be wrong-headed or intemperate or just plain mean . . . but I would be astonished if they were judged libelous in a court of law.”

Butler President Bobby Fong disagreed in a letter he sent Tuesday to faculty members.

“Academic freedom does not provide protection for defamation and harassment,” Fong wrote. “Indeed, the free exchange of ideas demands that faculty, students and staff be protected from defamation and harassments because these are the means by which bullies intimidate others into silence.”

Ice Miller attorney Michael Blickman filed Butler’s lawsuit Jan. 8, in part, he said, to compel the anonymous blogger (Zimmerman) to come forward, which happened in June in response to subpoenas.

Since then, talks have been held between attorneys for both parties, but there has been no resolution. The Butler employees are seeking damages, and the lawsuit is pending in Marion Superior Court. No hearings have been set, Blickman said.

Lawrence Township’s Guthrie, a teacher at Lawrence Central, took her complaints about harassment by a school administrator to that administrator’s boss. And then to the superintendent. Not satisfied with the response, she began to post lengthy rants about the case on her personal Web site.

“For over a year I begged my principal for help,” Guthrie e-mailed The Indianapolis Star this week.

Her online postings alleged that an administrator subjected her to “spiraling harassment” that included “sexually inappropriate comments” and actions that made Guthrie’s tenure at Lawrence Central “unbearable.”

As word spread, Superintendent Raimondi addressed the matter in her online posting this week, asserting “there is more than one side to the story,” but that the nature of the issue prevented her from going into details.

Contacted Friday, Guthrie and Raimondi declined to comment.

The issue of posting strong comments about teachers and fellow students became a national debate earlier this year when the Web site “Juicy Campus” was shut down after complaints of harmful, personal comments about college students and teachers.

“Some people mistakenly believe that the Internet is the Wild West where no rules apply. But that is just wrong,” attorney Blickman said. “The Internet is simply today’s technological equivalent of yesterday’s town square. If you defame someone on the Internet, you should be held accountable.”