AEJMC members approved several resolutions at their business meeting Friday supporting the First Amendment and the rights of student journalists and endorsed the idea of extending the organization’s support of free press issues to high schools.

AEJMC’s outgoing president Sharon Dunwoody also turned over the presidency to Wayne Wanta, president-elect and professor of journalism at the University of Missouri. Wanta said Dunwoody, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, left him with “very large shoes to fill.”

In passing the first of three resolutions about press freedoms, AEJMC members approved one denouncing the Bush administration’s decision to ban publishing photographs of the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and the administration’s use of propaganda in Iraqi newspapers to describe the status of the war. The resolution also called for AEJMC to send its position to the media and trade press.

“This is the first statement against general anti-press policies in an administration in at least 30 years,” said David Mindich, author of the resolution and professor of journalism and mass communication at Saint Michael’s College.

The organization’s members also voted to support the First Amendment rights of students and to protect faculty advisers and students working on the newspaper. They said media advisers, university faculty and university administrators should not have control over content in student media. Members also planned to develop a resolution for consideration next year calling for the same protections for high school media.

“I support every word of this constitution,” said Jim Upshaw of the University of Oregon, who was among those supporting expanding the resolution’s language to include high schools.

AEJMC members passed a resolution calling for the reinstatement of Karen Bosley as adviser to student media at Ocean County College in Dover Township, N.J. Bosley was removed by Ocean County administrators after the student newspaper, the Viking News, printed negative stories about the college’s president and other members of the administration. But last week the Asbury Park Press reported that a federal judge temporarily restrained the college from removing Bosley, asking the three students who filed suit on Bosley’s behalf to prove her removal was a retaliatory strike by the administration.

“The resolutions today speak to the health of the First Amendment,” said Frank Fee of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Incoming AEJMC President Wanta announced that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation have given the organization a challenge grant of $25,000, requiring AEJMC to raise the same amount.

In addition, Wanta said that because of the success of the San Francisco convention, finances for the next year look solid.

Members passed a motion that will increase dues for the first time in five years, raising the price $5 in each category so that regular and associate member dues are now $105. The dues for retired members only receiving the newsletter will remain the same.

In other business:
* AEJMC created a committee that will assess gender and race equity over the next three years. Colleges and universities have had continuing problems in the hiring, tenuring and retention of women and people of color.
* The Committee on Teaching Standards is arranging a competition in the coming year for the Best Teaching Standards for Media Ethics, in honor of the 2005 Teacher of the Year, Louis Day, an alumni professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University, whose research focuses on media ethics.
* Numerous awards were given to AEJMC faculty for excellent research, female faculty were recognized for their contributions to the field, and the graduates of the Journalism and Mass Communication Leadership Institute for Diversity were honored.
* The Elected Standing Committee on Research announced the unanimous creation of the Tankard Book Awards in honor of the late James W. Tankard, Jr., who was a dedicated member of the AEJMC and a professor emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin.
* AEJMC is participating in an international journalism education convention called the World Journalism Education Congress, scheduled June 25-28 in 2007 in Singapore. Eighteen different journalism associations from around the world are organizing the convention.