UMD Athletics agrees to First Amendment training after student journalists questioned by police

The University of Maryland Athletics Department has agreed to receive First Amendment training from a national legal advocacy organization after two student journalists were confronted by campus police while reporting on the head football coach’s departure this week.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression will conduct the training at the College Park campus with the department’s staff, said Marie McMullan, the group’s program manager and counsel.

The Student Press Freedom Initiative team is “eager to work with UMD Athletics to ensure all staffers understand the rights of student journalists and the First Amendment principles at play on public university and college campuses,” she said in an email.

The group said the student journalists, Nolan Rogalski and Jude Wilkenfeld, were reported to police for “suspicious activity” while attempting to interview football players after it was announced that Michael Locksley, the team’s head coach, was stepping down. The pair, who are editors with the Testudo Times, a student-run sports publication, said they were standing outside Jones-Hill House, a sports complex on campus, when a staff member came outside and snapped a photo of them without speaking to them.

Minutes later, an officer with the University of Maryland Police Department arrived, took down their student identification numbers and encouraged them to leave the area, they said.

Maryland Athletics did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday on the training, but it said this week with campus police that there were “heightened concerns for staff and player safety around the football program in recent weeks.” The statement did not expand on those security issues.

Rogalski said in a text message that he was “grateful Maryland’s athletic department has committed itself to education on better respecting the First Amendment.”

“The University of Maryland’s student journalists do valuable work, and I hope they can feel empowered by this acknowledgment of the importance of press rights on campus,” he added.

FIRE often advocates on behalf of student journalists across the country, including University of Maryland graduate student and Capital News Service reporter Cat Murphy, who was threatened with prosecution by U.S. Rep. Andy Harris at a post-debate news conference this month.

The Republican congressman demanded that Murphy stop recording him, incorrectly saying he was allowed to deny her the right to record based on the state’s wiretap law, which requires consent of all parties to record a private conversation. The law does not apply to public conversations, such as a post-debate news conference.

McMullan said FIRE regularly trains student journalists on their rights but added that “it is just as important for the campus community to value and promote the First Amendment.”