Free speech rights don’t begin with a college degree. Too often college administrations around the nation don’t seem to understand that. So they pressure students and advisers to compromise their beliefs or face the consequences.

The Paul Isom firing at ECU really brings this point to light. The ECU administration fired Isom after he refused to censor the nude photos of a streaker his students wanted to publish. After failing to pressure Isom into violating his students’ First Amendment rights, ECU’s Pirate captains just decided to make him walk the plank.

As if that were not bad enough, the ECU head of marketing and communications sat down with the editors and told them how to make their newspaper, “The East Carolinian,” more PR friendly.

Those editors, like all mass communication students, get to hear from the first day of media classes how important the first amendment is. All will have media law, which deals heavily with the First Amendment.

So these editors get to spend hours of class time learning about their free speech because their school mandates it. But what are the real lessons places like ECU are teaching their journalists? It seems like a “do as I say, not as a do situation.”

The very notion of such a meeting like that held between the ECU marketing department and the student editors is absurd. I hardly think ECU’s marketing department would sit down with the editors of Greenville’s newspaper, “The Daily Reflector,” and tell them how to run stories more suitable to ECU’s public image.

Student journalism is no different. The role of student journalists is the same as the professionals. We just don’t have degrees yet. Too often that fact is forgotten by schools who are not used to being challenged in any way.

Students have the ability to make sound decisions. We are allowed to practice their First Amendment rights just like anyone else. Just give us a chance, and people can be amazed by what we can do.

Then again, maybe that’s what people are afraid of.