STEVENS DEFENDS HANDS-OFF POLICY AT SK STUDENT NEWSPAPER

SOUTH KINGSTOWN - South Kingstown High School teacher and newspaper advisor
Donald Stevens is defending his policy that allowed the name of a
15-year-old student to be printed in connection with a quote admitting the
illegal use of drugs.

Under the headline "Drug story in SK student paper raises privacy, legal
issues" in Friday's Narragansett Times, the article explored the privacy
rights of minors and the "hands off" approach used by Stevens in training
student journalists.

The student's mother says that her child, who is a staff member of the
student newspaper The Rebellion, was quoted in a story in the October2002
issue without her consent. She has protested the matter with school
principal Kevin Sheehan and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Hicks. In
a telephone conversation last Friday morning after the story appeared in
The Times, Stevens denied refusing to remove the student's name when she
requested he do so, as she had alleged. He acknowledged, however, that she
and the student who wrote the article told him there had been "a change"
and that the page "needs to be reuploaded" on the computer.

The student's mother still stands by her daughter's account of what transpired.

"It becomes my word against his word," she said in a telephone interview
Monday night.

Stevens continues to defend the right to print the name. "It's not illegal
to print a minor's name," he insisted. "[The student] agreed to be quoted.
They subsequently decided it wasn't a good idea."

Attorney Joseph Cavanagh Jr., who specializes in media and legal
regulations, said last week that allowing the name to be printed might be a
violation of the law. Parental permission is typically sought when quoting
minors, he said.

Stevens also reiterated Friday that the newspaper is entirely run by
students in a journalism class and they are responsible for the final product.

When asked if he thought about the effects of printing the student's name,
Stevens replied, "I've considered such things very deeply. It was a
conscious decision. It shows me the class was working."

But he wouldn't address whether it was appropriate to print an admission of
illegal drug use using the minor's name.

As to how the name could have appeared when the student specifically
deleted both her name and the quote from the story in the computer, Stevens
called it an "unfortunate but honest error." He later faxed to the Times
the following written account of the sequence of events:

"No mysterious person re-inserted the quote in the paper. The student who
was assigned to be editor of this issue notified us that he was going to
miss the entire layout week due to a school trip.

"In an effort to help as much as possible," Stevens continues, "he stayed
after school and compiled the 16 working pages into a master document
needed to send to the printer. The working pages were not finished, and
nearly all of them needed to be completed. As they were completed, they
were re-uploaded to the master document.

"[The students] deleted the quote from the working page, but apparently the
revised document was never uploaded to the master document. This was an
innocent, if unfortunate oversight. However, no one deliberately
re-inserted the quote."

Before the student paper went to press, Stevens noted that no one looked at
the final pages. "If I had known they wanted to pull that quote, I would
have pulled it," he said. "If I've done anything wrong, I'm willing to face
the music provided it is grounded in facts."

"The damage is done," the student's mother said Monday. "The school feels
it's over and done with and I don't know how to rectify it."

She said Hicks told her in a meeting last week that Stevens is responsible
for the newspaper product. She said Hicks is also composing a letter to
submit to The Rebellion. The superintendent could not be reached for
comment by press time.

Despite recent events, the student has decided to complete the course for
the remainder of the school year.

"I feel she can get a fair grade in that classroom," the student's mother said.

She added that she feels her family's privacy has been violated and that
the school has washed their hands of the issue.

"It's over as far as they're concerned, but I'm not sure we feel that way.
It's something private that has become public," she said, "and it needs to
be dealt with."