SIUC is trying to make amends for deleting some comments from its Facebook page in the hours after the Faculty Association strike.
School of Journalism director Bill Freivogel wrote a piece about the controversy in the Gateway Journalism Review. In it, he and other media legal experts talked about whether the university violated the First Amendment.
Three of the four scholars Freivogel interviewed said they thought the SIUC Facebook page is a public forum where the university cannot discriminate against a certain viewpoint.
Freivogel says he believes the page was set-up originally to portray a positive image of the university, but in the end it led to the school taking a public perception hit.
Freivogel says he believes SIU-C has handled the situation admirably by restoring the constructively critical comments to the Facebook page.
