How Far is Too Far? Freedom of Assembly

Hannah Nixon
Announcements Editor
April 2009 Blog Post
https://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1894

The week of April 29th, half of Catholic University of America’s (CWA) student newspapers were reported stolen. Copies of the paper, called The Tower, were recovered in trash bins around the campus. The staff and News Editor Justine Garbarino are looking to make up for the lost inventory. However, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was not making the process easy.

After reporting the theft, the editors of the paper were informed by the Metropolitan Police department that the crime was, in fact, not considered to be a crime at all. The MPD’s reasoning was that because The Tower does not charge for their paper it could not be considered a criminal act.

However, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) Adam Goldstein said otherwise. “That the owner of property does not charge for it does not mean the property has no value,” Goldstein said.

So How far is too far? Did the culprits push the limit of freedom of assembly because they were concurrently corrupting the CUA’s freedom of press?

“We work very hard and we feel like we are getting pushed aside,” Garbarino said.

Although the culprits were exercising one of their rights as Americans, their actions were not ethical in any way because they were also undermining the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. Colorado, California and Maryland are the only states who legally hold this type of act as criminal; however this does not change what the culprits’ actions evoked.