SEX, DRUG SLOGANS PROMPT INQUIRY INTO KIRBY ANNUAL

Whatever Happened To "Most Likely To Succeed?"

To the dismay of parents and school officials, Kirby High School's yearbook
included such superlatives as "Most likely to . . . Be a pimp (girls);
Stripper; Be a porno producer; Drunk at graduation."

One page listed "student pickup lines," while quotes from seniors included:
"Light that Green, Smoke that Green, Pass that Green."

More than 60 sex or drug references were found on 12 pages parents
distributed at the school board's meeting Monday.

Board members asked administrators to investigate what happened.

Much of the offending material can be heard routinely in rap music lyrics.
Indeed, lists of seniors' favorite songs and performers yielded about a
dozen sex and drug references.

But principal Thomas Killough and school board member Sara Lewis said
educators must hold school publications to higher standards than commercial
radio or TV programming.

Killough on Tuesday mailed an apology and offered to replace the flawed
yearbooks Thursday and Friday. Only students who turn in the original can
get a new copy.

Killough didn't expect anyone to cry censorship, and neither did media law
experts.

"(School administrators) are within their rights to do this," said Elinor
Grusin, an associate journalism professor at the University of Memphis.
"The Supreme Court gave school officials the right to determine what's
educationally appropriate for younger students."

"Not that I agree with it," she added. "I think we're teaching the wrong
civics lesson to kids, that they have to accept censorship."

Others said it's up to educators to help guide students about what's
appropriate for such publications.

"They live in a world where the music the references allude to are everyday
life," said Mark Goodman of the national Student Press Law Center. "They're
not automatically looking at these issues in the way adults in the
community are."

Neither Memphis nor Shelby County schools appears to have policies on
student publications.

Kirby's yearbook adviser, English teacher Keith Williams, couldn't be reached.

Killough said he couldn't say whether disciplinary action was being considered.

The principal blamed the problem on an Internet-based yearbook publishing
service being tried for the first time.

Pictures and text were submitted online, and the school didn't receive page
proofs before it was printed.

Williams edited out vulgar language online, but his fixes didn't make the
finished product, Killough said.

Grusin teaches media law and is project director of The Teen Appeal, a
monthly newspaper produced by city high school students.

"Students are always pushing the envelope," Grusin said. "Some of the
things that are uppermost in their minds seem to deal with topics that get
under the skin of administrators, because they have to do with sex or drugs
or pregnancy. They don't always understand how far they can go in talking
about these things."