As managing editor of the Arrow student newspaper at Utica High School in Michigan, Katy Dean was determined to report on the potential harmful effects of diesel fumes from idling school buses, despite school officials’ attempts to suppress her story.
With the help of the Student Press Law Center, Dean contested her school’s censorship. In November 2004, a federal judge ruled that school officials violated Dean’s First Amendment rights by not allowing her to publish her story. As the stories in this issue of the Report illustrate, Katy Dean is not alone. Countless other student journalists who are able and interested in uncovering the truth are fighting for the freedom to do so.
Since 1974, the Student Press Law Center has been the only national organization exclusively devoted to providing free legal advice to student journalists and advisers and serving as an advocate for their free press and freedom of information rights. Please help the SPLC defend young journalists for years to come. When you make a contribution to the SPLC’s Tomorrow’s Voices endowment campaign, you help ensure that the voices of young journalists like Katy Dean will be heard long into the future, not silenced. For every $2 contributed, the John S. and James L. Knight foundation will match with $1. Visit www.tomorrowsvoices.com for details on how you can give.
This summer, former SPLC intern Abbie Gibbs rejoined the SPLC as Development Director. For more information on the campaign please contact Abbie at development@splc.org. Abbie is communications/journalism graduate of Oklahoma State University where she was an award-winning reporter for the student newspaper, The Daily O’Collegian.