Carrying on the fight: how to begin
Friends of the Spoke is an amazing resource.
The students launched it as an informational site about the proposed policy changes. They interviewed and posted that information. They sought community letters to the board in support of the Spoke.
And others can use it, as well as some of the tactics mentioned earlier to model their own approaches.
Go there and you will find:
• Information about student and publication awards.
• History of proposed changes to Spoke policies and links to coverage.
• Special reports containing sensitive and important stories students felt caused the drive to change policies.
• Contact and background information for the Spoke and student journalists.
There is also a link to an updated Spoke site, a blog, where students wrote the site was re-designed to recognize their new role. “After the district changed its proposal that would have led to censorship of the Spoke, the organization is now focused on defend the The Spoke by keeping the community informed of the latest news at the papers, and making our resources available to student journalists nationwide who are facing censorship.”
Even after winning the fight, the students continue their vigilance.
For those facing censoring, the decision to fight might not be an easy one. But it has to do done.
It has been done before – and succeeded.
As has been said, the price of liberty calls for eternal vigilance. There is no lesser way.
As Henry Rome said, the fight is long and the future is important.
Read MoreFighting the fight is a student-driven process: Part 2
Even though a fight against censorship is rooted in emotion, that emotion cannot direct the fight, 2009 JEA High School Journalist of the Year Henry Rome said.
Neither should the adviser.
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said the adviser’s role is to prepare students ahead of time why press freedoms are important and reinforce it at every opportunity.
“The adviser can’t be the public face of a censorship case,” he said, “because at the end of the day, she must maintain her loyalty to the school.”
Behind the scenes, though, the adviser can – and should – educate administrators about why censorship is a bad strategy as practical management.
“It breeds greater disrespect for authority,” LoMonte said. “It tarnishes the image of the school much more than letting a negative story run uncensored. The adviser can, and should, find ways to call the principal’s and community’s attention to the positive things journalism does.”
But waging the fight is a student responsibility, LoMonte said and the student editors here did everything right.
“First and foremost,” he said, “their journalism was unassailable. Unfortunately, students are held to standards that often are higher than those of the top professional media entities, so that a misspelled word or a correction is enough for a school to pretextually censor their work. This work was bulletproof.”
Second, he said, students cannot, although it is an emotional fight students should not run around shouting “First Amendment.”
“That argument carries no weight with schools and very little weight with the public at large,” LoMonte said. “You must make the argument about the practical effects of attempting to censor student journalism. Seth and Henry convincingly made the case that, if the proposed prior-review policies were enacted, they would have felt fearful of pursuing the award-winning stories that had brought so much credit to the district.”
LoMonte said the number one recommendation to students is to build alliances before they are needed. Those alliances could include a media alumni association, a parent booster club, contacts with the local media. He also said join scholastic media organizations and enter as many competitions as possible. Send all contacts copies of student media.
“You need to anticipate the people arguing in favor of censorship,” LoMonte said, “will argue myths and misperceptions, not facts.”
How to counter that:
• Go into conversations asking questions with making arguments.”For instance,” LoMonte said, “when you get the argument prior review is necessary to avid the school being sued for libel, you could argue back. But it might be more effective to ask questions.”
• Talk about the strengths of the journalism program and how students have learned, and how others recognize this learning through awards and accolades.
• Bring the censorship into the public arena
Spoke students did all those things.
“They used the political process expertly by drawing on alliances with the professional media, parents, and the alumni community, to the point that they managed to put censorship of The Spoke on the radar as a contested school board campaign issue,” LoMonte said. “Just as importantly, they stayed on top of every move their school board made. Too often, harshly punitive policies are sneaked past the students and then are nearly impossible to reverse. These students vigilantly read every draft and attended every committee meeting, developing credibility that allowed them to speak to the school board with authority.”
In short, Rome said, Spoke students worked on a three-prong approach: engaging the district in conversations, reaching out to the community and working with local and national media to explain their story.
Next: Starting the new year off right
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Text of JEA letter to Stevenson admins, links to overall coverage
In response the ongoing prior review situation and restraint at Stevenson High in Lincolnshire, Illinois, JEA President Jack Kennedy recently sent school officials the following letter. Links to Chicago area coverage of the situation follow the letter:
Dr. Twadell,
I am a long-time admirer of Stevenson High School, having read numerous scholarly articles by faculty members on Professional Learning Communities and Advanced Placement courses, having followed “The Statesman” for over 20 years, and even having visited your campus just three years ago. I have always imagined Stevenson as a bastion of academic excellence, an example of the comprehensive American public high school at its very best.
Events involving “The Statesman” over the past year have certainly rattled that perception. I have no standing to get into particulars of how events have unfolded, but to have a second instance of the school administration and board leadership coming down on the side of squelching discussion and debate in a newspaper that has a long history of being an open forum for student expression is deeply troubling.
Garnering national attention is certainly not something new for Stevenson, but that this national attention is now so negative must also trouble you. I represent the national organization that supports scholastic journalism educators, and their students by extension, and I hope you will believe me when I say that your school is rapidly becoming the symbol of censorship in American schools. Instead of discussions about the progressive curriculum and fine instruction at the school, journalism educators from across the country are now discussing extraordinary pressure being applied to faculty advisers and administrative attempts to act as “super editors.” This micromanaging has no end. If someone outside the classroom has the power to approve or deny the mere coverage of certain issues, is there any doubt that we eventually find assistant principals correcting spelling, asking for more sources, and quibbling over how a photograph is presented?
Imagine applying the same sort of micromanaging to a football coach, with each play call being approved by some assistant athletic director sitting in the press box. That would be intolerable. Imagine threatening to simply cancel the next football game due to a poor performance by the team last week. In fact, imagine demanding absolute perfection from any sports team or course in the school. That sort of school climate would be equally intolerable.
I hope we can agree that our job, from board members to administration to classroom instructors, is to help our students improve each day, which presupposes that they are not perfect now. Will mistakes be made as we all work to produce valuable citizens? Of course. We will regret them. We will make adjustments. But we will not turn our backs on our young people, even when they disappoint.
The Journalism Education Association has consistently supported student free expression rights over its 85 years, but the association also advocates an adviser code of ethics, as well as distributing positions on photo manipulation, use of copyrighted materials, and Internet expression to our membership. In other words, the association advocates for responsible journalism in a broad array of areas. JEA stands ready to provide support and expertise to anyone involved in disputes over student expression. I sincerely hope you will not hesitate to contact John Bowen, JEA’s student press rights commission chair, Linda Puntney, our executive director, or me if we can be of any assistance.
I would like to think that, ultimately, we agree on the importance of student expression as part of the high school experience.
I ask that Stevenson High School return to its former status as a school where students come first, and where free, open, and responsible discussion of even the most sensitive issues is encouraged.
Coverage of the situation:
• Stevenson High officials halt publication of Statesman
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-stevenson-school-paper-20-nov20,0,1175320.story
• Students say district forced them to publish
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/chi-high-school-newspaper-25-nov
• Stevenson High orders students to publish
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/comments/?id=339605#storycomments
• Presses roll at Stevenson, without offending stories
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/11/presses-roll-at-stevenson-high—-without-offending-stories.html
• Student newspaper is a lot leaner, less controversial
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-stevenson-censored-26nov26,0,5752444.story?obref=obnetwork
• Controversial Stevenson student newspaper released
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=339713
• Muzzling students
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-1126edit2nov26,0,6053750.story
• Stevenson High to students: publish or perish
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/dennis-byrne-barbershop/2009/11/stevenson-high-to-j-students-publish-or-perish.html
• SPJ blog by David Cuillier
http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/foi/
• Il high school students face censorship
http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/campus/
Stevenson High School
What’s happening at Stevenson High School reminds me a lot of what happened at Hazelwood East High School in the 1980s. Controversial stories like the ones in the most recent issue of the Statesman at Stevenson, including one on teen pregnancy, also appeared in the Spectrum at Hazelwood East in 1983.
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said in a quote in the Chicago Tribune today that the stories in the Statesman were “balanced, responsible and mild.” So were the stories in the Spectrum.
It’s frightening to think that almost 28 years after the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision that we have made little progress in educating administrators to realize there is nothing educationally sound about censoring “balanced, responsible and mild” content in scholastic publications.
School newspapers across the country in the 1970s and prior to the Hazelwood case in the 1980s covered sensitive and controversial issues in a responsible manner. The Kirkwood Call, the newspaper I advised, had reported on all the topics the Spectrum covered prior to 1983 without any censorship threat from the administration. I realized I was blessed to work with great administrators during my teaching career.
Now, however,there are advisers and students in a lot of states who shy away from covering anything controversial because of fear of administrators cracking down. At Stevenson High School, administrators decided to stop publication of today’s issue when the students on the newspaper staff decided to leave a blank space where a story on teenage drinking was supposed to go. The writer of the story had quoted two students anonymously. Administrators apparently wanted to know who the students were, but the paper’s staff decided to go with a blank space rather than reveal its sources.
We must, as JEA members, come up with ways to educate administrators on the rights of students. Even in states that have passed laws to override the Hazelwood decision, censorship is still happening.
Maybe it’s time we asked all former recipients of JEA’s Administrator of the Year award to band together and help us win the battle against censorship. When it’s happening with publications that have been by policy or practice operating as public forums, then it’s obvious we need to step up our efforts to educate administrators.
Most student publications I see are practicing responsible journalism. They’re not causing a disruption of the educational processes with what they print, and they’re not printing articles that would cause legal problems. It’s time to eliminate administrative censorship when articles are “balanced, responsible and mild.”
If you have ideas as to steps JEA might take to solve this problem, contact John Bowen, JEA’s Student Press Rights Commission chair. Let’s work together to win this battle.
Read MoreTattoos: Save your ink, student journalists
One of the few academic studies of body art, “Tattoos and Body Piercings in the United States: A National Data Set,” shows 24 percent of respondents had tattoos…and that was 2006. USA News & World Report said this fall parlors for such art are “one of America’s fastest growing categories of retail business, with nearly one tattoo shop opening each day.”
It’s a big deal, right? And, while the stats haven’t caught up with what’s happening to teens now, it’s a good bet kids are getting inked at a pretty speedy rate. Sometimes that’s legal, and sometimes it’s not, depending on their age, the state’s laws and possible parental consent.
So it sounds like a great topic for student media. What is legal and what isn’t? Need parental consent? Why students get tattoos? Safety and health issues? And… for a follow-up — long-term effects? Regrets those who got tattoos have? Pain and cost of removal? Employer reactions? Plenty to cover.
Not so, say at least some school administrators.
Recently, the Timberland High School principal in Wentzville, Mo., pulled first a spread with photos and text about tattoos. Later, he told The Wolf’s Howl staff to pull ads for a local tattoo parlor, a client with a full-year contract, meaning a loss of several hundred dollars.
His excuse, editor-in-chief Nikki McGee told the Student Press Law Center Web site reporter: This falls in the category of “drugs, alcohol and etc.” and thus is censorable. McGee told the SPLC she had yet to receive an answer to her request to define “etc.”
A Kentucky newspaper adviser shared his concern when his principal wanted to cut an article about teacher and student tattoos. The tattoo photos weren’t really the issue — the principal seemed more concerned about teachers who said they got theirs “with their husband’s gambling money” or in a trade for a beer. “I don’t see any possibility of this article causing a great disruption,” the adviser said to a listerv.
This concern with tattoos isn’t exactly new. In 2005, Oak Ridge (Tenn.) High School principal objected to photos of students with tattoos, partly, she said, because the girl’s parents didn’t know she had such body art.
Thus tattoos may be increasingly popular, and teens may want and even need to know more about them. At the moment, though, consider this topic along with sex and drugs as something to cover with care and professionalism. Be prepared to explain why it is an important topic and worth the ink….and then be prepared to call the SPLC.
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