STUDENTS MUST BE BRAVE IN THE FACE OF SCHOOL CENSORSHIP

The Scout's newsroom usually buzzed with a bunch of us neophyte
journalists publishing a biweekly paper for our suburban high school.
But on one cold day in January 1988, we had something else on our
minds besides college acceptance letters and prospective prom dates.

That day, the Supreme Court ruled that high school students did not
share the same First Amendment rights of free expression as adults.
Our adviser's wide blue eyes flashed with anger as she tried to
explain what had happened in the Hazelwood School District outside
St. Louis. The district was not unlike ours: suburban, middle class,
full of young people who had been brought up to believe the
government's protections extended to them.

But when the editors of the Spectrum at Hazelwood East High wrote one
article about pregnant teens at their school and another about
divorce, the principal objected to the articles and stripped them
from the publication.

By a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the principal's right
to censor the paper, which was produced in a journalism class like
the one in which we published the Scout.

Suddenly, the fulcrum supporting students' rights to free expression
shifted. It was slight at first, and our adviser assured us that our
principal and most high school administrators had no interest in
meddling in student media. Before 1988, the courts had looked to a
1969 Supreme Court ruling that neither students nor teachers "shed
their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the
schoolhouse gate." After 1988, we were no longer running the student
paper as the previous generation of students had: under the
assumption that teenagers enjoyed the same First Amendment rights as adults.

Now, the high court said, a school could refuse to lend its name and
resources to disseminate student expression it objected to, and that
wasn't the same as punishing student expression that happens to occur
on school grounds.

The majority held "that educators do not offend the First Amendment
by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student
speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their
actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns."

That's given high school administrators wide latitude to censor
publications, according to anecdotal information collected by the
Student Press Law Center.

What's worse, high school students often produce papers that read
more like public relations vehicles, writing puff pieces rather than
practicing serious journalism by scrutinizing those in power and
fostering public debate. They learn about the First Amendment in the
abstract, but know they can't summon its powers to their side if they
work for a school-sponsored publication. The result is that they
emerge from high school with an anemic understanding of their
constitutional rights and the craft of journalism.

Though the ruling applied only to high school publications, the
shadow of that ruling looms over colleges.

In last year's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" ruling, Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas outlined in admiring terms a history in which
students had no rights: "Teachers taught and students listened.
Teachers commanded and students obeyed," he wrote. Stanley Fish, a
law professor at Florida International University and a former
college dean, endorsed this position in his New York Times blog last
year: "Not only do students not have first amendment rights, they do
not have any rights: they don't have the right to express themselves,
or have their opinions considered, or have a voice in the evaluation
of their teachers, or have their views of what should happen in the
classroom taken into account. (And I intend this as a statement about
college students as well as high-school students.)"

So, high school and college students, be bold in your practice of
journalism to counteract the position of professor Fish and others
who would undermine your right to free expression. Citizens
interested in preserving the active press that is central to
democracy can help by pushing for the kind of laws enacted by
Arkansas, California, Colorado and other states that give students
much stronger protection than Hazelwood.