Please Make That Story Disappear

MayorBob.

Posted to Etcetera on Sun Aug 17, 2008 at 09:50:53 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Shakespear Feyissa is learning a few lessons. Lesson one is that your actions can have unintended consequences. Lesson two, once something gets reported on the internet, it's awfully tough to expunge. Feyissa, a practicing Seattle lawyer, says something that happened over ten years ago is causing him pain and anguish because it can easily be googled. He says the original controversy blew over, so how about deleting that report? Problem being that the report in question is in a school newspaper archive. And the student journalists say once reported, forever archived

The Feyissa case began back in 1998 when he filed a complaint with federal authorities charging his school, Seattle Pacific University (SPU) with racial discrimination. Feyissa had been suspended by SPU following his arrest for sexual assault, charges which were subsequently dropped. Feyissa, an Ethiopian immigrant, filed a complaint stating that SPU's discipline was over-harsh because of his race and national origin. Following a four month investigation, SPU was cleared. This made the school very happy. This left Feyissa very unhappy. This was all documented in a story in the school newspaper, The Falcon.

So unhappy was Feyissa by the outcome of his complaint against the school he called "like the KKK" he began filing a series of lawsuits against SPU. This ended in 2006 with a final dismissal of his claims by the Washington state Court of Appeals. Exhausting his legal arguments against the school for the suspension, he now turns his attention to the next thing that bothers him - the reporting of his suspension and his original complaint. He has been quietly trying to get SPU to go along with voluntarily removing the story, which is easily googled everytime someone searches for Feyissa. His problem with the story are the words he spoke back in 1998, calling the school "like the KKK." He's also bothered by the statement of an SPU official who said Feyissa was "a threat to persons on campus." He also says the knowledge that he was once arrested on suspicion of sexual assault is playing hell with his dating life. All that quiet work must have paid off because SPU authorities agreed to remove the story and asked the student editors to comply. The student editors said they couldn't because "we have principles in journalism that don't allow us to put stuff in the memory hole and pretend it never happened."

SPU originally asked for removal of the story back in late 2006. The refusal of the editors has now lasted a full two academic years. The school's concern is money; everytime Feyissa calls the school to ask for removal, he talks to the school's attorney and billable hours ensue. According to Don Mortenson, school vice president for business, "I'd love to have the students pay for it (the attorney's time) next time." In the mind of Mortenson, the story is unimportant and not worth standing up for. In the mind of the editors, including incoming editor Evi Sztajno, it's all about the First Amendment. What SPU authorities want is access to The Falcon's servers. According to Sztajno, as a private school SPU could probably "come right in and take the story down." Instead, they keep asking permission, a permission which can't be granted due to concern over freedom of the press.