Underground's fight ends

MISSOURI — The American Civil Liberties Union is declaring victory in the case of an underground newspaper editor who was searched and suspended for distributing an anarchist paper at school.Hickman High School in Columbia removed the five-day suspension from student Abe Haim’s permanent record and allowed him to distribute two more issues of his paper off school grounds without incident, said John Coffman, president of the Mid-Missouri ACLU.Haim had been suspended after distributing the first issue of his paper, _The Black and Red_, which contained a racist message allegedly written by another student at the school.Haim’s parents contacted the ACLU after he was searched by school officials and forced to name the other students involved with the paper.The issue was peacefully settled before a lawsuit was filed.Coffman said the situation “educated a lot of people and hopefully caused teachers and administrators to think about the issue of the student press.”