There’s lots of outrage online about Smith College students barring media from a sit-in yesterday. But digging deeper, it’s clear that this wasn’t a traditional “sit-in” — the event had an announced start and end time, presented no demands, and apparently proceeded with the blessing of the administration.
It was less a sit-in, in other words, than an informal conference or meet-up.
Given that, it’s not clear to me why anyone would think the organizers had an obligation to invite the media. (Whether it was bad PR to turn journalists away is another story.)
This is a real question I’m asking. Not rhetorical, not snarky: What principle says that the organizers of yesterday’s Smith College event had an obligation to allow media to attend, and what’s the nature of that obligation? (I’m assuming that nobody’s arguing they had a legal obligation, since — as the Smith administration pointed out — the college is a private institution.)
My own sense is that it’s generally a bad idea for large-scale student groups to shut media out of conventions where leaders are being chosen and platforms are being adopted. I remember recoiling, years ago, when I first read about SDS barring reporters from their last national convention in 1969, and I still have the same negative reaction today. An SDS convention was a public event of public interest, my gut tells me, and it should have been open to the public.
In other cases, I know that there are legal arguments to be made — some institutions and organizations are covered by open meetings laws which mandate that the public, including press, be allowed to attend certain parts of certain meetings.
But yesterday’s event at Smith wasn’t a business meeting of a charity or a governing board or a student association. It wasn’t a rally in a public space. It wasn’t a demonstration that closed down a street or a bridge. It was a group of students getting together to talk and hang out and connect with each other.
What’s the principle that says that those students had a responsibility to invite the press to join them?
studentactivism.net 
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November 19, 2015 at 4:47 pm
JimG
“What’s the principle that says that those students had a responsibility to invite the press to join them?’
No one said they had to invite the press to join them. That isn’t the same as barring them. A sit-in is by definition a public event. *Every* single sit-in in history has been so. The same is true of the word ‘demonstration’. This would be high farce if it wasn’t so sad.
If they wanted a truly private meeting, they could easily accomplish that. They could pass out flyers to black students rather than advertising, for instance. They still want attention. They just want to dictate the terms.
This is an incredibly stupid course to pursue & tactics like this alienate many people on the left who would otherwise be in their corner.
You can’t advertise “campus free speech” while trying to throttle the expression of journalists. That doesn’t wash.
November 19, 2015 at 4:55 pm
Angus Johnston
Jim, I can think of plenty of campus sit-ins that were closed to the press in one way or another, and at any rate my argument was that this wasn’t exactly a standard sit-in.
November 19, 2015 at 6:12 pm
Angus Johnston
To expand on the above a little, Jim, now that I’m on my phone: There have been plenty of occupations of campus buildings over the years that either protesters or administrators or both controlled access to. The idea that every protest action — whether you call it a “sit-in” or a “demonstration” or something else — is necessarily open to the public isn’t supported by history.
As for throttling the expression of journalists, I’m unconvinced. Journalists have been able to write about the event, and have done so. They just weren’t given unfettered access to the event.
And journalists are turned away from events by their organizers all the time. Politicans hold fundraisers that the press is barred from. Groups hold organizing meetings behind closed doors. If this is different in some fundamental way, we have to be able to articulate why.
November 20, 2015 at 3:31 am
Nivel
It doesn’t sound like there was necessarily any reason for the press to be at this event, you’re probably right. Which is what makes it such a great example for you to cherry-pick to show that vindictive, illiberal activists are somehow being misrepresented. Good job.
November 20, 2015 at 5:36 pm
Lirael
I’ve been at demonstrations where reporters were pepper-sprayed, tackled, beaten, falsely arrested, pulled over and detained at gunpoint. I follow the Twitter account of a journalist who was arrested and partially strip-searched at an Occupy Oakland protest in late 2011, and who wrote about it. In none of those cases was there as much mainstream media angst as I’ve seen over the interactions of Mizzou and Smith college activists and the press. I googled most of them to make sure there wasn’t some wave of angst that I missed. The college-activists-vs-press hype is bizarre to me.
November 20, 2015 at 8:03 pm
Lee Russ
If they want to keep the press out, fine. The problem is that they selectively allowed the press in: press that said “we’re with you” got in, press that wouldn’t say that had to leave. And this version of a loyalty oath was asked of the press in their role as the press.
That’s not only wrong in a general sense of how our press is supposed to work in this country, it is incredibly shortsighted on the part of the students.
November 21, 2015 at 8:45 am
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