Students at Florida university could fire newspaper adviser
Student government wants to oust journalism adviser after campus newspaper reveals student leaders gave selves pay raises, lawsuits may follow
By: Jennifer Peltz/Knight Ridder Newspapers
Issue date: 12/9/04 Section: News
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BOCA RATON, Fla. - Against a backdrop of concerns about censorship, Florida Atlantic University's student government was debating late Friday about fining and suspending the campus newspaper's adviser.
With a firm warning from the university administration and threats of a free-speech lawsuit, the student government's University-Wide Council was considering complaints that newspaper adviser Michael Koretzky had violated some of the student government's detailed rules about choosing an editor-in-chief. The student government is the publisher of the weekly University Press, underwriting its $120,000-a-year budget out of student fees.
The paper just published an article disclosing that student leaders recently gave themselves a 25 percent pay raise and maintaining that some of them threatened the paper while the article was being prepared.
The complaints, filed by two former staff, call for fining Koretzky as much as $6,000 and suspending him from his $22,000-a-year job, though Koretzky has a contract with FAU, and university administrators have indicated that they believe his employment ultimately is up to them. The complaints also sought to postpone the choice of a new editor "until at least one more candidate from outside the University Press runs," but the student government panel unanimously rejected that bid.
"My job's to teach journalism, and while this isn't what I had in mind, I can't think of a better lesson," said Koretzky, a jazz magazine editor and a former South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter.
The showdown came a day after a subset of the student government, the Boca Raton campus senate, called for pulling the paper's funding next year unless its staff and content were "restructured" to "establish a working relationship with the Student Government Association and to assist them with getting information and news out to FAU students ... rather than write often uninformed articles ... skewed by individuals with a history of bias and distaste for our elected officials."
With a firm warning from the university administration and threats of a free-speech lawsuit, the student government's University-Wide Council was considering complaints that newspaper adviser Michael Koretzky had violated some of the student government's detailed rules about choosing an editor-in-chief. The student government is the publisher of the weekly University Press, underwriting its $120,000-a-year budget out of student fees.
The paper just published an article disclosing that student leaders recently gave themselves a 25 percent pay raise and maintaining that some of them threatened the paper while the article was being prepared.
The complaints, filed by two former staff, call for fining Koretzky as much as $6,000 and suspending him from his $22,000-a-year job, though Koretzky has a contract with FAU, and university administrators have indicated that they believe his employment ultimately is up to them. The complaints also sought to postpone the choice of a new editor "until at least one more candidate from outside the University Press runs," but the student government panel unanimously rejected that bid.
"My job's to teach journalism, and while this isn't what I had in mind, I can't think of a better lesson," said Koretzky, a jazz magazine editor and a former South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter.
The showdown came a day after a subset of the student government, the Boca Raton campus senate, called for pulling the paper's funding next year unless its staff and content were "restructured" to "establish a working relationship with the Student Government Association and to assist them with getting information and news out to FAU students ... rather than write often uninformed articles ... skewed by individuals with a history of bias and distaste for our elected officials."
