HARRISBURG — With a sexual showdown looming at today's state House Appropriations Committee hearing, battle lines formed in Harrisburg yesterday.

Responding to the Sex Faire brouhaha, Gov. Tom Ridge called yesterday for Penn State to apply more "common sense restrictions" to student speech.

Also, in response, a group of Penn State professors released a legal brief stating student-run events, even those with offensive themes, are protected under the First Amendment.

Penn State President Graham Spanier, who appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee, kept his relatively diplomatic stance. He apologized for the offensive programs but defended the students' rights to free speech.

"I would only ask that we keep this in the best perspective we can," Spanier said. "I have the ability to control those 100,000 people (students and employees of the university) about as thoroughly as the governor has the ability to control the behavior of members of the legislature."

Sex became the sideshow to Penn State's budget process after Rep. John Lawless, R-Montgomery, launched attacks on two student-run, feminist events that dealt explicitly with sex.

Lawless, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said Penn State should suffer financially for allowing such events.

The first event to draw Lawless' ire was advertised in November with a banner featuring a four-letter profanity. Lawless and Ridge both said the word was inappropriate.

Spanier said Penn State would implement a new policy on banners, considering that children are often present on campus.

"The protocol for hanging banners will be changed," Spanier said after the hearing. "We're not going to regulate the content of people's speech, but we have to consider the propriety of language that is hung on buildings."

Ridge's letter on the student events was released while Ridge was at a governors meeting in Washington, D.C.

In the letter, Ridge asks Penn State to "reconsider its public statements to date, wholly defending the university's role in these events."

Ridge wrote while free speech was important, "there are aspects of both these events where common-sense restrictions could and should have been applied." Ridge also recommends the university consider new policies on events with offensive content.

Ridge's letter disagrees with Lawless' suggestion to cut off the university's funding in the middle of the academic year. Ridge writes that Lawless' plan would "be more irresponsible than the decisions he seeks to punish."

Five Penn State professors also disagreed with Lawless' plan, backing it up with legal casework.

The two directors of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, associate professor Robert Richards and assistant professor Clay Calvert, held a press conference in the Capitol rotunda yesterday to discuss students' rights.

They said a university is a "marketplace of ideas" that should be free from government limits on speech.

A statement signed by five professors said Rep. Lawless asked the university to act in an illegal way by censoring students' rights. The professors said Lawless is wrong to withhold funding on the condition that Penn State do something illegal.

Calvert said last night that the professors had received both positive and negative e-mails about their statements.

"I imagine we'll be criticized by some and lauded by others," Calvert said. "And that's what the marketplace of ideas is all about."

Lawless is prepared to show the committee a five-minute edited version of a video he made at the Feb. 3 student-run Sex Faire.

An hour-long version of the footage, shot by a House of Representatives cameraman under Lawless' direction, has begun circulating among media outlets.

The video features Lawless sparring with students and Penn State administrators over the explicit literature available at the Sex Faire. In the video, he gives his approval to only one table, which offered information about sexual health.

At one point, the camera focuses on a poster where students were allowed to scribble the names of people they find sexually attractive. One person wrote "Lawless' wife (just kidding)."

"This is exactly why this program should be shut down," Lawless is heard saying on the tape. "Most of these people don't even know my wife."