Students have increasingly begun to post their own news on personal websites. This spring, Georgetown students and alumni, angered by the decline of the men’s basketball team, created an online petition calling for the University to fire Head Coach Craig Esherick. Several years earlier, in a similar move to foster change, a student at American University created a web site of his own, one dedicated to criticism of AU’s president, Benjamin Ladner.
Over this past summer, Ladner filed a complaint regarding the website created in his name. The website, www.benladner.com was created in Dec. 2001 by Ben Wetmore as a Drudge Report-like forum for news regarding Ladner’s presidency.
The website, which claims to be the independent voice of AU, is now maintained by current students and has developed to cover campus news and events, not just Ladner’s actions.
The site has a page-long mission statement, which includes: “Our project originally intended to lower the opportunity costs for students to gain access and information about the University and the community. This included information about President Ladner’s job requirements, salary figures and accomplishments in his more than eight years as president. We quickly realized however, that our site meant much more to AU than just facts, figures and photos of President Ladner.”
In filing a claim with the National Arbitration Forum, which handles cases outside of court, Ladner claimed that people can mistake www.benladner.com for the official site of the AU president and that the website attempts to capitalize on his name for profit. Ladner said that he has never visited the site himself.
There is disagreement as to whether Ladner is indeed famous enough to merit coverage by laws often used by celebrities to protect their name, which are often argued to be “trademarks.” While students at AU obviously know the face and name of their president, not many others are likely to recognize Ladner.
According to AU’s Media Relations Director Todd Sedmak, the issue at stake is not free speech or content, it is “the appropriate use or misuse of a person’s name.”
Wetmore, who graduated from AU in 2003, reserved the domain name by paying $20 to a Yahoo domain server.
Wetmore told the Washington Post that he started the website after listening to friends’ complaints about AU, particularly yearly tuition increases.
