Hubbub At 'Hooper High'

By: Mark Fitzgerald My mother was in her seventies when she graduated from Ocean County College in Toms River, N.J. "I always tell people I'm in the class of 1990, I never say the year I graduated high school," she says. But for all the years she went there, taking one or two night classes at a time, Mom had no idea the college had a student paper, she told me Monday when I called to say her alma mater was getting famous in journalism circles.

Just in the last couple of weeks, events at the Viking News student paper have provoked a federal lawsuit, a censure of the college by the professional organization for student journalism advisors, and a exhaustively detailed, 23-page report by a Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) task force that calls the situation at Ocean County College (OCC) "a case study in suspicion, frustration, escalation and the hardening of positions on all sides."

OCC is a growing community two-year college on the verge of becoming a four-year institution that is working hard to overcome its old local nickname of "Hooper High." (It's located off Hooper Avenue, north of the Ocean County Mall.) Bruce Springsteen buffs remember OCC as the school The Boss attended very briefly, but long enough to get a few poems published in its literary magazine.

For 35 years, journalism Professor Karen Bosley was the Viking News' faculty advisor while building a 12-course journalism curriculum leading to associate degree. That all ended at a Dec. 12, 2005 meeting of the Board of Trustees. Acting on the recommendation of OCC President Jon Larson, the board terminated Bosley as the student advisor, effective in June 2006. At the same time, her teaching load was stripped of journalism classes and replaced by English courses.

Bosley's supporters at the college say the administration was angered by stories critical of the college, and that it wants to control the paper.

Nonsense, counters the administration. Larson and other college officials, for instance, told the SPJ task force, headed by former Newsday Editor Paul Schreiber, that the pressure they put on Bosley was to update the technology and look of the newspaper -- and that she resisted. She dawdled when instructed to draw up a five-year plan for the paper, they say.

So far, the tenured Prof. Bosley, 61, appears to be getting the better of the public relations fight.

On campus, the Faculty Association voted unanimously to urge her reinstatement, the SPJ report noted. The Student Press Law Center also urged her reinstatement.

CMA formally censured the OCC while demanding the reinstatement of Bosley, who the group named "Distinguished Newspaper Adviser" in 1978, an award that can be won only once.

CMA's principal investigator in the case, David Adams of Indiana University, said the group could find "no educationally sound reasons" for Bosley's removal. The administration "seemed to want to tame down the criticism of the student press," and so targeted Bosley, he added.

"Censure of Ocean County College is unfortunate, but not surprising," said Tom Eveslage of Temple University, who also visited OCC as part of the investigation. "Everything I have heard and read in recent months about the way the OCC administrators have responded during the press/adviser controversy echoes the arrogance and indifference that fueled this free-speech battle. It is sad, indeed, when school administrators put on blinders and dig in their heels to turn a journalism exercise in critical thinking into a show of power and control."

But Tara Kelly, OCC's vice president of college advancement -- and an administration official Bosley's supporter also blame for the termination -- told E&P in an e-mail that the CMA and SPJ reports bolster the school's position.

The SPJ report, for instance, says at one point: "We agree with the administration that Viking News needs to improve its look, layout, photography and reproduction."

"The college agrees wholeheartedly with the SPJ's conclusion that the Viking News is in need of vast improvement," Kelly said. "Also, neither organization concluded that there are clear First Amendment infringements and we regard that as vindication of our position."

Kelly had a sharp response to CMA's demand to reinstatement of Bosley, and SPJ conclusion that the administration "badly handled" the termination and should change the way it selects advisers. She called those parts of the report "gratuitous advice" on an internal personnel matter.

"It is reprehensible for these organizations, who both visited our campus for one day and have minimal understanding of very complex issue, to make public recommendations on who is the best person to advise our student newspaper," Kelly said. "If we were a commercial newspaper that fired an editor, we doubt either of these groups would insist on infiltrating the offices for a day and grilling the staff to determine whether that editor should be replaced or if that editor's firing constituted an infringement of the First Amendment rights of the reporters who worked for them."

While the SPJ report in particular goes out of its way to see both sides of the controversy -- it even takes some SPJ local and national leaders to task for immediately condemning the OCC when news of the controversy surfaced last winter -- it ultimately condemns the college's administration, too.

The report says, for instance, that Bosley was "dragging her feet" about putting together the five-year plan, but at the same time it says she was probably justified because the entire process was tainted by the administration's agenda of removing her and taking control of the paper.

"A strong case can be made, and we believe has been made here, that senior administrators at OCC were primarily interested in establishing and maintaining control at the college, including over the flow of information and over those who would disagree with them," the SPJ report says.

Kelly said she couldn't comment more "comprehensively" because of the litigation that has arisen.

On May 10, three students filed a First Amendment complaint in U.S. District Court in Trenton, alleging their free press and free speech rights had been violated by the administration, and seeking an order to reinstate Bosley as the Viking News adviser.

The Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, in an article by Joseph Picard of the Toms River bureau, reported the attorney for the three students is seeking a preliminary injunction would keep her as adviser past next month.

Meanwhile, Bosley, in a prepared statement, said she is reassured by the support of CMA "in these difficult circumstances as we work to preserve a free and vigorous press on the Ocean County College campus."

For the administration's part, Kelly says the SPJ report's criticism of some of its members public comments on the situation "speaks volumes on how unfairly we have been treated" by some journalism organizations and media outlets. "There are two sides to every story, and in this case, many organizations didn't even bother to ask us before they chose sides," she said.