Published: March 01, 2008 12:04 am         

Both sides need to give on student papers

By Cindy Allen, commentary



I once again made my yearly trek over to the PEGASYS High School Media Day to talk to local high school students about the state of student journalism in our region, the state and the nation.

Unfortunately, I continue to have to talk to them about obstacles that get in their way of providing interesting and compelling student newspapers.

It’s difficult to try to inspire students to become interested in becoming journalists when they often don’t get any real education or experience at the high school level. Administrators continue to suppress their voices and their journalistic capabilities.

As I told the students, I don’t mean any disrespect toward administrators. These people have a huge job and a lot to do. These kids walk their hallways every day, and they know what goes on in the schools. The last thing a high school principal or administrator needs to worry about is if his student newspaper is going to cause him or her any grief.

However, part of an administrator’s job is to ensure students are learning critical thinking skills while they are in school. By suppressing their ideas and their voices and censoring “controversial” or “uncomfortable” material from student publications, those administrators are unwittingly allowing these students to miss out on an big learning opportunity.

So, what are some of the topics that are being censored from the student press these days? Stories about sex or drugs or alcohol are always going to raise the ire of administrators.

However, legitimate and interesting stories that are of public record and taxpayer interest are routinely being censored by principals out of the school newspapers. An example was in Desoto, Texas, when student journalists questioned a school board expenditure to an organization charged with providing gang intervention programs in the school. The students questioned whether this organization’s statistics on gang activity in their schools was overstated; when they looked into it, they found this particular organization had previous problems at other schools.

The school board responded with threats of censorship. On several occasions, the students were accused of being racist or unethical. Luckily, the local media picked up on the story and the district was forced to sever its ties with this organization.

There’s another instance of a student newspaper covering the story about a lawsuit filed against their school district. The lawsuit alleged diesel fumes from idling school buses were detrimental to health. A person claimed the fumes made him sick. The administrators wouldn’t let the students publish the article because it was “embarrassing” to the school district.

These are instances where students’ First Amendment rights and the right to publish material in the public record are clearly being violated, and the student press is finally starting to win some judgments in these lawsuits.

I encouraged the students to try to understand where their administrator is coming from. First and foremost, student journalists must have respect for the school administrator’s authority.

However, they can try to open the door of communication a little wider by talking to their administrators about the goals of their newspapers. If they have a controversial stories, they should try to provide an outline of the topic they want to cover and how they intend to cover it.

School administrators need to back off a little bit with their student newspapers and provide their advisers and their student staffs the opportunity to publish quality, informative and entertaining student newspapers.

But the level of paranoia that exists in so many schools today is choking creative and critical thinking, and in the end, it’s the adults who are going to pay the price.

We’re training the future leaders of our country and our businesses. Do we really want these future leaders to be afraid to speak their minds, to express their ideas, to explore something they believe may be wrong?

We as adults need to start encouraging and supporting students who pursue their protected free expression rights in a responsible way.



Cindy Allen is managing editor of the Enid New & Eagle. She can be reached at 548-8163 or by e-mail at editor@enidnews.com.