Hazelwood is everyone’s problem
by Carrie Faust
Hazelwood stories: Since the Supreme Court voted to limit the rights of scholastic journalists with the Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier decision in 1988, Colorado – and six other states – have enacted legislation to ensure the rights of students in those states would not be affected.
Ideally, because some state laws can trump federal law, those pieces of legislation should have ensured students would continue to operate with full authority as to the content of their publications and without fear of censorship from their school leaders. Unfortunately, that is not always reality, even in these seven states.
Across this country, principal licensure programs barely touch on the issue of the First Amendment in schools. When they do, Hazelwood, a lesson of ignorance, fear and control, is the lesson taught, even in states with Anti-Hazelwood legislation.
Hazelwood has become a broad, sweeping brush stroke, used to paint over all topics “controversial” or “inappropriate” that may be covered in a school publication. The words “legitimate pedagogical concern” have been used to censor papers for everything from spelling errors to “unsportsmanly” critiques of the football program, to student opinions on the administration.
Hazelwood is everyone’s problem. In the last few years, states with Anti-Hazelwood legislation have been as likely to make the news for issues of censorship as those without. In Colorado, an adviser tried to censor her students for featuring a same-sex couple in the yearbook. A California school district tried to limit the right of scholastic publications to determine the content of their advertising. In Oregon, a school administration confiscated a paper because students ran a Twitter screenshot containing profanity.
Isn’t this illegal? Yes. Principals who have been trained incorrectly, under the Hazelwood standard, to operate out of fear, will make a decision to censor every time. More often than not, after weeks and months of bad publicity for the district, the students regain their right to publish. But, the knee-jerk decision to censor is systemically ingrained.
Hazelwood continues to be the cancerous standard school board policy generators like the Colorado Association of School Boards and NEOLA use, even when the districts they are generating for are in Anti-Hazelwood states. School districts everywhere continue to have on the books school board policies that go against these laws.
Hazelwood is taught to the administrators and policy-makers across our country with no regard for the lies and vitriol that come with it because there has been no large-scale, local, retraction to the Hazelwood language, even though experts agree the decision should not limit student rights the way it has been used.
Hazelwood is everyone’s problem. Even if advisers are lucky enough to live in an anti-Hazelwood state, you, and the students you teach, are affected by its far-reaching implications. Principals are trained using the Hazelwood standard to censor without cause, and students everywhere are self-censoring for fear of repercussion.
The only way to make this right is to demand a review of the Hazelwood ruling by the Supreme Court. They must reverse this decision that flies directly in the face of our Bill of Rights. Until that time, advisers and students must be vigilant in their education of administration and their pursuit of anti-Hazelwood legislation.
Hazelwood is everyone’s problem.
Read MoreEager to learn, students find Hazewlood as inspiration, provocation to ‘ruffle feathers’
by Don Bott
Hazelwood stories: My favorite part of teaching Journalism 1-2, the beginning class made up mostly of freshmen, is the unit on press law and ethics. Up until that point, we focus mostly on writing for various pages. A few in the class by this point are beginning to grasp the power of journalism. It is not merely self-expression but something more meaningful. These students want to be on staff next year.
This is the time in the year when I outline the significant rights — and responsibilities — that high school journalists have, especially those in California.
Students become fascinated to learn about something as fundamental as First Amendment rights. They marvel at what a brother and sister went through at an Iowa high school long before they were born. My students, who mostly see clothing as a matter of fashion, are now thinking about a black armband and the abstract notion of protest. They then shudder to see how student voice, protected in one historic Supreme Court ruling, could be challenged some 20 years later because of articles that potentially “make the school look bad.” This is history they can relate to.
Advisers in California should not have to worry about Hazelwood, about a principal as “publisher.” Sure enough, my 20-plus years of advising newspapers have been free of administrative intrusion. Still, in this favorable atmosphere, educating students is almost more important. With more rights comes greater responsibility — for the adviser and for the students.
Curiously, I have found that students are often timid when it comes to how far their reach should be in a story. Regardless of law or ed code provisions, many are reluctant to offend. They want to look good and sound good and not be seen in any way that is bad. Rather than wait for some outside authority to stop them, they are too willing to censor themselves. The boldness of a staff from Hazelwood East High School must serve as inspiration, provocation: Find the story out there that is compelling, the story that must be told, the story that will ruffle feathers.
The legal restrictions of Hazelwood, I like to say, have “never applied to California.” But Hazelwood has always mattered in this state. Students need to be educated, and sadly so must many educators, even administrators.
As I write this piece, I am closing out the unit on press law and ethics, a unit that gets longer every year. Students are more excited about journalism than they have been all year.
Read MoreBlog12: Out of adversity, strength: Hazelwood leads to thoughtful passage of Iowa free expression law
by Jack Kennedy
Hazelwood stories: Random thoughts about the Hazelwood decision:
- I was aware of this court case as it developed, unlike the Tinker case. I had been a high school sophomore when the protests in Des Moines were going on in December of 1963. I was 100 miles away, but may as well have been light years away, for all the knowledge I had of what Mary Beth and John and Charles were doing.
- I was in the protected enclave of Iowa City, and by the late ‘80s the newspaper and yearbook were well-established as progressive voices for a progressive community. The threat from the Hazelwood decision was, for us, less visceral and more philosophical. Iowa City High School was unlikely to change its support of the Tinker standard, and we were blessed with administrators who trusted us to push the boundaries, but to ultimately be about the thinking and writing and coverage that the school had come to value.
- Freedom without limits leads to chaos (as we see in America’s love affair with the gun), and the Hazelwood decision led to numerous individual and class discussions about what those limits might be. It occurred to me even then that this decision produced more solid learning about rights and responsibilities, and the role of the student press in the community, than I had seen in years.
- I still marvel at how quickly state leaders such as Mary Arnold, then director of the Iowa High School Press Association, and Merle Dieleman, Ann Visser and other Iowa advisers, and an obscure state senator from Solon named Richard Varn not only adapted state statutes from California and Massachusetts and wrote an Iowa law, but pushed it through the legislative process so quickly that Iowa had a law signed by the Republican Governor, Terry Branstad (and yes, he’s back), in roughly one year.
- I had a small part in the writing and lobbying, and remember meeting the governor in Des Moines a few months after the law was signed and complimenting him on his support for student free expression. The look on his face was that of surprise that he had actually signed such a bill. I suppose he found himself in that difficult place some lawmakers experience, trying to balance his faith in freedom with his basic distrust of young people and with education in general. Back in 1989, he chose to side with freedom.
- Sure, that freedom has some limits, but we can live with those. After the law was passed, the Little Hawk prospered to such an extent that the paper won nine Pacemakers in 10 years. I suspect that the freedom to cover literally any issue, no matter how sensitive, contributed to that success.
- Out of adversity grew strength. I hated what Hazelwood represented, and still do, but it was a great reminder that the fight for freedom is never truly over. It needs to be cherished and struggled over, day after day and year after year.
Read More
Jan. 13 decision paralyzes student mood about journalism
by Brenda Gorsuch
Hazelwood stories: When I became the newspaper adviser at West Henderson High School in 1983, I loved telling my students about the Supreme Court’s Tinker v. Des Moines Community School District decision from 1969.
I enjoyed listening to them discuss the rights the First Amendment and the Court had guaranteed them. My students felt empowered. It was inspiring to watch the pride and spirit of responsibility they brought to their work on the Wingspan. At one point, an assistant superintendent in our school district tried to prevent my students from publishing an in-depth story on sex education, but our principal came to our defense. He reminded his boss of the Tinker decision and told her that his students understood their rights and responsibilities and that he supported their efforts.
Then came Jan. 13, 1988. We were shocked by the court’s decision in the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier case. The mood in my classroom that day was so somber that an outsider would have thought someone had died. My students felt paralyzed. How could adults as knowledgeable and powerful as the Supreme Court justices think they were not entitled to their rights as citizens?
Over the weeks and months that followed, my young journalists became tentative and, at times, timid in pursuing stories that needed to be told. It was disheartening to watch their fearful second-guessing and self-censorship.
In the years since the Hazelwood decision, I have become even more convinced that the Supreme Court got it wrong. If we expect excellence and give students the opportunity to be responsible, they will rise to our expectations. I believe students should be allowed freedom of expression in their publications.
I can understand the Supreme Court’s concerns expressed in the Hazelwood decision, but I believe the justices expected too little of today’s youth. The publications at West Henderson have never been submitted for prior review by an administrator.
As their adviser, I continue to encourage my students to tackle important issues and to report them in a fair, accurate and balanced way. In spite of Hazelwood, my students continue to inspire me.
Read MoreSchool censorship costs advisers, students at Illinois student media
by Randy Swikle
Hazelwood stories: Here is a nutshell of Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois., and how Hazelwood diminished Barb Thill’s J-program:
In Illinois, all but four staff members of one of the nation’s most honored student newspapers quit the publication and dropped their journalism class after school officials publicly rebuked student reporters and their adviser, repeatedly censored accurate articles, revoked the “designated forum” status of the paper, adopted a policy of prior review and edited the paper themselves.
The adviser, a nationally recognized teacher, lost her position. (In a year’s time, two replacement advisers also lost their “newspaper adviser” assignments.)
In an editorial, the Chicago Tribune criticized school authorities and praised student journalists for the high quality of their censored work.
Read More