To start, please review this piece of literature. For your convenience, I have colorized the important parts.
1.2 Student's Relation to Civil Law
As citizens, students of Ball State University enjoy the same basic rights and are bound by the same responsibilities to respect the rights of others as all other citizens.
Among the basic rights are freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, freedom of political beliefs, and freedom from personal force and violence, threats of violence, and personal abuse.
Freedom of the press guarantees there will be no censorship of students or of any other individuals in the Ball State community. Professional journalistic standards encourage the public's right to know, accepted ethical practices, accuracy, objectivity, and fair play; students and other individuals in the University community are encouraged to follow these standards.
It should be made clear in writings and broadcasts that editorial opinions are not necessarily those of Ball State University or its students.
The campus is not a sanctuary from local, state, and federal law.
The University does not stand in loco parentis for its students.
Admission to and employment by the University shall be in accord with the provisions against discrimination in local, state, and federal law.
Did you catch all of that? We should be allowed to say what we want without getting censored by the university. After all, they claim to adhere to the rules of free press, and we wrote the article to portray the person as an ambiguous fictional character. If the University truly does not stand "in loco parentis," they have no reason to fear litigation from anyone we write about (or more likely, in this case, from that person's parents).
We are encouraged to adhere to the rules of accepted ethical practices, accuracy, objectivity, and fair play, but that doesn't mean it's required. If it were, that slanted article crying racism because the police were responding to legitimate noise complaints would never have been published on the front page of the Ball State Daily News. How do I know it was slanted? Because I was the guy who called the police in the first place. The students were chanting and screaming at 2 in the morning, and I was trying to study. I didn't realize they were (*gasp*) black until I had already called. After the police left the first time, instead of quieting down, the students moved to a different part of the field where I couldn't see them from my window, but they were still fucking loud.
Many people we know, including authority figures, have verbally commended us for our the content of said article. Whoever had a problem with this was supposed to come to us first, rather than crying to the Department of Fuck the Bill of Rights.
More than anything else, I'm disappointed in the University. I've been called by the Department of Student Rights and Community Standards to talk about the site, which pisses me off to no end. After all, it's finals week. I need my study time.
~Johnny
Supplement: The Director's message on my answering machine
Email Johnny at cyberpants@gmail.com