Campus News Editor
According to the Virginia Supreme Court, the Virginia Tech student newspaper didn't defame school administrator Sharon Yeagle when it referred to her as the "director of butt licking."
The court's 7-2 decision in favor of the Collegiate Times has stressed the importance of proof reading to the paper's staff.
Students said the reference appeared when dummy type, or non-proofed text, made it into print. Yeagle, assistant to the school's vice president, didn't believe that explanation and filed suit against the newspaper for the 1996 article.
Yeagle asked for at least $850,000 to compensate for damage to her professional reputation.
The Supreme Court justices, however, decided that the phrase could not be construed as factual information about Yeagle's job. Therefore, it could not damage her professional career.
"In this case, 'director of butt licking' is no more than rhetorical hyperbole," Justice Elizabeth Lacy wrote for the court's majority.
"It cannot reasonably be understood as stating an actual fact about Yeagle's job title or her conduct."
James R. Creekmore, the newspaper's attorney, said the students would be more careful about future incidents.
"Let's just say (the students) have made some changes so the chances of this happening again aren't so great," Creekmore said.
Though the newspaper's insurance covered most of its legal bills, it did have to pay a $5,000 deductible.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Eleven students at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville were arrested as the result of a six-week undercover drug investigation.
Undercover officers with the state drug task force posed as students and moved into residence halls when campus police officers reported that drug dealing had increased in those halls last semester.
University Chancellor John White approved the investigation, which ended in the arrest of the 11 students and three non-students. Seven of the students arrested live off campus.
Charges against the students included delivery, manufacture and possession of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms. Five students were also arrested on suspicion of possessing firearms.
Police seized six marijuana plants, six ounces of marijuana, a quarter-ounce of mushrooms, $1,603 in cash and two Jeep Cherokees in the raid.
Administrators at Antioch College in Ohio expelled four freshmen who admitted to hanging a black mannequin by the neck from a tree on the school's campus.
Students and school officials discussed the Feb. 23 "lynching" during a regularly scheduled meeting designed to improve campus communication.
At the meeting, four male students admitted they were responsible for the incident. One student apologized and said the incident was meant as a joke, not as a racial expression.
"The act of expression and its negative impact on the fabric of our community must be considered separately from the intentions of those making the expression and must be unequivocally condemned," said Bob Devine, interim president of the college.
"This clear violation of community standards requires a swift and unambiguous institutional response that affirms our core values and re-establishes our sense of community standards, safety and well-being," he said.
STANFORD, Calif. - Four former Stanford University students have won a $300,000 settlement from a couple who refused to let them rent a house because they were Asian.
Property owners Jack and Beverly Hybl, who have since sold the rental property, have agreed to receive training in fair housing laws in addition to paying the settlement, which is one of the largest stemming from alleged housing discrimination.
The students alleged Beverly Hybl said she had "good, white American applicants" who were interested in renting the house while taking the Asian students on a tour of the property.
Later, they said, she chased them away from the house, yelling, "We white people need to stick together" and "Go back to your country."
A woman in the house at the time told attorneys that Hybl apologized for subjecting her to the exchange, but added, with reference to the students "They're ruining our country."
The students found out about the property from Stanford's Community Housing Office and urged that office to drop the couple's properties from listings.
The university did so six months after the 1996 incident.
College News Roundup briefs were collected
from College Press Service reports.