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‘It is difficult to imagine a non-retaliatory motivation’

The University of North Alabama isn’t exactly thrilled with its student newspaper’s recent coverage.

Last month The Flor-Ala exposed the taxpayer-funded university’s warning to faculty and staff that they aren’t allowed to talk to the media without sending inquiries through the press office first.

Two months earlier it reported that the administration ignored a “long-standing attorney general opinion” by denying a public records request for personnel records on an administrator who resigned suddenly and a professor who was banned from campus.

In seeming retaliation, the administration is planning to force out the newspaper’s advisor, Scott Morris.

The College Media Association formally censured the university for suddenly raising the minimum education requirement for the advisor position, which amounts to firing the 30-year journalism veteran Morris.

Its First Amendment Advocacy Committee launched an investigation, which was spurned by the administration. It found that Provost Ross Alexander met with student editors, Morris and the communications department chairman, Butler Cain, a week after the public-records article. He complained about “several inaccuracies” in the article.

Two weeks later Morris learned from his dean that Alexander was changing his “non-faculty position” into a “tenure-track faculty position” that requires a doctorate, which Morris doesn’t have. The university has already launched a national job search:

While the FAAC investigator could find no “smoking gun” email in which administrators admitted that they had changed Morris’s job description in order to force him out, administrators could provide absolutely no correspondence, reports or materials indicating they were thinking of changing this position before publication of the Sept. 6 article that students and Morris said instigated the change.

MORE: UNA bans profs from talking to media without preapproval

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is also breathing down the university’s neck.

It wrote two letters in two weeks regarding the “media protocol” for faculty and staff and the “ongoing pattern of retaliatory censorship” illustrated by Morris’s removal.

Adam Goldstein, program officer in FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program, told President Kenneth Kitts in a letter dated Friday that the university’s claims about Morris’s position had been “contradicted” by another official.

After it was censured by the CMA, a university spokesperson told Times Daily that the university had been discussing an “upgrade” to the advisor position since “late 2014.”

That timeline doesn’t work for two reasons, according to Goldstein. Morris was hired in “late 2014” as well, “an odd decision if UNA was already considering changing the job description to one with different qualifications.”

The head of the communications department through 2015, Greg Pitts, also disputed the university’s rationale in an email to the Southeast Journalism Conference, which is reprinted in Goldstein’s letter:

I NEVER initiated a request to convert the line to a tenure-track position. I don’t believe anyone can produce evidence of such a request at a level above me.

There was no money for a faculty line in journalism and little opportunity to move the UNA program ahead. The chance to align the student newspaper with the Department of Communication … made sense. But there was no talk of converting the position to a faculty line. A Ph.D. faculty member also would not likely have the experience to serve as an adviser.

If UNA asserts that discussion started in 2014 to change the position to a tenure-track line, I must add that it did NOT begin with me.

MORE: Nebraska lawmakers offer bills to protect free speech after UNL censors club

The Southeast Journalism Conference told the university that its plan to replace Morris, who played a substantial role in the newspaper’s excellent financial health, with a PhD likely wouldn’t help students:

It is not unusual, indeed it is quite common, for a university to have someone with a bachelor’s degree and several decades of professional experience in lieu of an advanced degree to serve as student media adviser and even full-time or adjunct faculty. …

UNA has indeed been fortunate to have a media adviser with 30 years of professional experience, something you won’t have with a newly minted Ph.D. The Flor-Ala has won numerous accolades on Scott Morris’ watch, more than the average, we would estimate, for a school your size.

Goldstein also pointed to a “2015 email chain” among university employees, unearthed in CMA’s investigation, that showed the university wanted to interfere in the newspaper’s coverage.

It had just written an unflattering article on a “university supporter” when Dean of Arts and Sciences Carmen Burkhalter, who has recently been given oversight over the paper, told Pitts that she wanted to change Morris’s job description.

When Pitts warned that it could be seen as an attack on the newspaper’s “freedom to cover stories,” the dean said the Flor-Ala would have to “improve” or it would be moved back to the student affairs office, which had oversight before her.

“In the present case there is a strong, if not conclusive, nexus between Morris’ removal and
administrative statements suggesting an intent to control, influence, or punish the content of
the Flor-Ala,” Goldstein warned President Kitts:

Between FIRE’s request, CMA’s request, SEJC’s interviews, and the extensive media coverage this issue has been given, UNA has had ample opportunity to provide documentary evidence to substantiate its stated claim of innocence. Instead, what little documentation it has provided has reinforced the connection between its attempts to control the Flor-Ala and its adverse job actions against Morris, and its statements have been contradicted by a former employee who would have had reason to know of their truth. It is difficult to imagine a non-retaliatory motivation UNA would have could have used to call Morris into a meeting to yell at him, then terminate him, and then impose a staff gag order that frustrates coverage of the aftermath.

MORE: Indiana Republicans refuse to protect students’ free speech

IMAGE: NOBUHIRO ASADA/Shutterstock

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