ILLINOIS ‘ When adviser Linda Kane was preparing to distribute the Oct. 26 issue of The Central Times at Naperville Central High School she was surprised to find that the inserts for the paper had mysteriously disappeared. What happened to those inserts is either a case of censorship or mistaken identity.
The missing ads were for teen club Zero Gravity. Kane said principal Tom Paulsen told the school’s janitorial staff to throw away the ads without ever notifying her because of concerns the club was not appropriate for high school students. Kane said she spoke to the custodian who discarded the box of inserts.
While Paulsen said he was concerned that ‘we would be putting in our paper an advertisement for a place that is not healthy for kids,’ he had no knowledge the ads were missing until Kane told him. ‘It’s a possibility that [the box of inserts] came to this office and I told the custodian to get rid off it ‘ not realizing what it was. There was absolutely no intention to unilaterally make a decision to override the newspaper’s decision.’
The paper obtained a new box of inserts to distribute with its Oct. 26 issue.