Assembly Speaker pro Tem Leland Yee (pictured) will join journalism students, free speech advocates, and professors at a news conference on Friday (Aug. 18) in San Francisco to urge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign AB 2581 which would ban censorship of college newspapers. The Legislature has approved AB 2581. Schwarzenegger has until Wednesday (Aug. 23) to sign or veto the bill. If signed into law, California would become the first state in the nation to specifically prohibit censorship of college student press.

The news conference will include Yee, D-San Francisco; Tom Newton, California Newspaper Publishers Association; Erna Smith, Chair, Journalism Department, San Francisco State University; Rachele Kanigel, Journalism Professor, San Francisco State University, and Carina Woudenberg, Journalism Student, San Francisco State University.

The news conference is scheduled for 12:30 p.m., Friday, Aug. 18, San Francisco State University, Room 309, 3rd Floor, Humanities Building, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco. For more information, call Adam Keigwin of Yee’s staff at (916) 319-2012 or (916) 256-5758.