(I will give) a brief summary of the issues involved regarding what I call the "chancellorspam" lists -- I use that term, not to be offensive, to define lists established by the authority of the chancellor (or designee) to send email to all members of a specific category (all undergrads, all grads, all faculty, all staff, etc), including those persons who have specificly requested NOT to receive such stuff. I distinguish this from voluntary listservs such as a professor might set up to discuss a research interest, or from classroom or organizational listservs (such as the fsucc@oit).

I am also dodging the question of if faculty are employees. Clearly you are -- you get paid -- but you also are citizens and the admin is considered to be the "state." So while I am sure what I am saying would apply to *students*, I am not completely sure if it would to employees.

Also, I would encourage all to see http://www.gazettenet.com/04022001/news/314.htm which is a story in the Hamp Gazette about the controvercy relating to the banner over So Pleasant Street. Ironicly, the paper version of this had a 1990 picture of the "pro-choice" banner in the story about the controvercy caused by the "pro-life" one.

The simple principle is that the state (eg UMass, or Amherst) can not restrict any speech on the basis of content. While it can place "police power" restrictions on time, place and manner of speech, it must ensure that these restrictions are "content neutral." For example, UMass can (*should*) establish rules that no one can scream speech out of dormatory windows after midnight -- but this must be neutral of the content of what is being screamed. UMass doesn't have to put bulletin boards in the student union (and actually removed half of them after an arson incident a few years back) but it can NOT regulate the content of what people put up.

This goes to the chancellorspam lists -- the university did not have to establish them, but once it did, once 'limited public forums' were created, it is *required* to administer them in a content-neutral manner. Hence if they can be used for announcements, they can be used for ANY announcement. If they are used to articulate policy, they can be used to debate the policy, if they can be used to advocate political positions, they can be used to advocate ALL political positions.

I am glad the issue of the Amherst town banner came out because it is a clearer example of this issue. Amherst doesn't have to have a banner over downtown, but if it decides to do so, it has to let all persons of any political perspective use it. This is what Bill Newman of the ACLU is saying at the end of the gazette article. And so to with the Chancellorspam lists -- UMass doesn't have to have them (and I am on record saying that UMass *shouldn't* have them) but if it does, it has to let things be expressed therein without regard to the content of them.

Remember that the Nazis didn't get to march in Stokie IL (in the '70's) because anyone particuarlly liked them or what they had to say, they got to march because the government did not have the right to make a judgement based on the *content* of their message -- and thus their march had to be considered the same as a KofC or KofP march expressing the less-objectionable content that those groups would have.

Ed Cutting