The Student Press Law Center asked New Voices advocates, including those working to implement recently passed laws, to reflect on their recent accomplishments and lessons learned. Other posts in this series can be found here.
Morgan Bricker has served as an English teacher, journalism educator and student media adviser for 17 years in Ohio and West Virginia. She currently advises Weir Student Media at Weir High School in Weirton, West Virginia. She also serves as the Journalism Education Association State Director for West Virginia and as a member of the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee. She worked closely with the Student Press Law Center, WVJEA members and their students to help pass New Voices legislation (Senate Bill 121: the Student Journalist Press Freedom Protection Act) during the state legislature’s 2023 Regular Session.
As we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the passage of West Virginia’s New Voices legislation — the Student Journalist Press Freedom Protection Act — and the progress that has been made since, we also recognize that the work has only just begun.
The third time was the charm for West Virginia, as it became the 17th state to adopt New Voices legislation, crafted by the Student Press Law Center and adapted by state lawmakers, in March of 2023. Stakeholders from around the Mountain State rallied to advocate for Senate Bill 121 — a process that took three consecutive years and legislative sessions to cross the finish line. As the Journalism Education Association’s State Director for West Virginia, I coordinated with SPLC, high school and collegiate media advisers and their students from around the state, and New Voices advocates, like Kellen Hoard, who as a student journalist received SPLC’s 2022 Courage in Student Journalism Award among many additional honors.
While adults from all entities were integral in collaborating and organizing to create a cohesive movement, it cannot be overstated just how important students were throughout this process. Their passion and hard work prevailed across the state, as they tirelessly called and emailed, sometimes daily, wrote op-eds and spoke with local news outlets to persuade legislators to move the bill onward.
In fact, there were many days in which our students received responses from the very same legislators that never once replied to any adults. Senators and representatives noted their appreciation for our students’ civic engagement in subsequent communication. In the end, I wholeheartedly believe our students’ emphatic participation is what made the difference, and I suppose that’s just as it should be. A bill about student voices quite aptly passed in an unlikely state because of those students’ voices.
The passage of West Virginia’s New Voices legislation is a relief for all the student journalists and their advisers across the state. They now have license to express themselves and exercise their First Amendment freedoms without fear of undue censorship, retaliation or worse. Those who advocated for this law have left an indelible legacy for all of the state’s future student journalists who will come after them, and they’ve shown those around the country that it is possible to pass this bill in any state. If West Virginia can do it, so can they!
The process has also reignited scholastic journalism in our state and helped us reestablish connections between schools and advisers, with colleges and universities and beyond. At one point, West Virginia had one of the oldest scholastic media associations in the country. We hope to resurrect that and make it stronger than ever. The passage of S.B. 121 was just the first step in an ongoing endeavor to fully enforce the bill and to reinforce scholastic journalism in our state.
Though our endeavor to pass the bill was successful, we have realized that passing the bill was only the first hurdle and that there is a long way to go for implementation. Throughout this past school year, WVJEA has held monthly virtual meetings, where we continually check in on progress made to ensure all counties adhere to the law and adopt local student media policies, and SPLC has closely monitored progress across the state.
According to SPLC’s spreadsheet tracking county implementation, so far, only six of the 55 West Virginia counties have adopted policies that fully comply with the law. The remaining 49 counties either have no policy at all or have policies that are problematic for various reasons. Convincing county school boards to enact such policies AND have them be fully compliant has proven tricky and, in some cases, contentious. We hope the holdout boards follow the reasonable requirements under the law and put some trust in their student journalists.
One sizable challenge we have encountered is that more than 20 of the counties in West Virginia utilize third-party services that draft board policies and give a wide range of options for boards to select. While SPLC is working with these companies to improve the sample student media policies they provide to the county school boards, the onus is still on those school boards to know their needs and choose their policies accordingly.
Even once all 55 counties enact a compliant policy, the work will not yet be done. Administrators could still attempt to chill voices. It is imperative that all the state’s high schools and colleges, their students and media advisers are aware of these policies and the protections that the New Voices law provides them, so they are armed and ready to combat such attempts.
New Voices work is not for the faint of heart, yet it is well worth the effort. Looking forward, there is much left to be done, but if we coalesce around the cause of raising awareness and ensuring implementation as wholeheartedly as we did to pass the legislation in the first place, there’s no doubt we will find success. It was the students’ voices who won the first battle, and it might just be theirs that win these ones, too.
I hope to play a significant role in helping West Virginia continue to expand scholastic journalism while also doing all that I can to help those in other states with their own efforts to pass New Voices legislation to ensure that every student across the U.S. has the same right to use their voices without fear.
Learn more about New Voices here.