Past winner: ‘The Epitaph was the wrong paper to pick on’

The Homestead Epitaph, winner of the Student Press Law Center’s 1988 Scholastic Press Freedom Award, is a name I know well: Homestead High School in Cupertino, California — my mom’s alma mater — is less than 10 minutes from where I grew up. 

In fact, my sister and I still wear her raggedy grey hoodie screenprinted with “The Epitaph 1987-1988” in green letters. And I’ve spent hours in my grandparents’ garage flipping through yellowed pages of intrepid reporting on complex, timely issues — ranging from affirmative action to AIDS.

My mom told me stories about The Epitaph’s high ethical and writing standards, intense community, and storied adviser Nick Ferentinos.

So naturally, when I came across The Epitaph while scrolling through past SPLC award winners, I called her up. 

The story

At 18 years old, my mom was a small part of an unforgettable team that resisted attempted principal censorship. Even more, it happened mere hours following the Supreme Court’s landmark Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision, which created a First Amendment carve-out for high school student journalists and gave administrators broad power to censor them.

It’s a rich story of student bravery that SPLC has come back to tell again and again, emphasizing the importance of a California law — the first of its kind — that protected student press freedoms even before Hazelwood was decided. The law allowed The Epitaph to publish their story despite the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In 1987, Homestead senior Kathryn Pallakoff was inspired to write an article about AIDS after reading the book “And the Band Played On,” written by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shiltz. Her mother, a Mercury News reporter, had recommended Pallakoff read the bestseller.

It was the height of the AIDS crisis, Pallakoff said, and there was no treatment for people who were HIV positive. At the time, there was “rampant homophobia, ignorance and hysteria,” Pallakoff said. So with that context, Pallakoff pitched Ferentinos her idea in the fall. 

Ferentinos — as any good journalism adviser would do — asked Pallakoff: “What’s the local angle?” 

That local connection came, sadly, just a few weeks later. One of Pallakoff’s friends confided in her — he had tested positive for HIV. To this day, Pallakoff has told only her mother his name; she sought to write the important story but maintain his anonymity. 

Ferentinos understood Pallakoff’s desire and protectiveness around her friend, but because there was an anonymous source involved, he wanted to be sure of the accuracy. 

Pallakoff was a diligent fact-checker and brought Ferentinos medical records and test results with the source’s name crossed out. That was enough for the editors — including my mom — and Ferentinos, so they decided to run the article in their December edition. 

Because it was a sensitive story, Ferentinos went to first-year principal Jim Warren to give him a “heads up,” recounted former editor-in-chief Mike Calcagno. 

District officials made an appearance in The Epitaph classroom, urging the staff to delay the story for fear of “gay bashing.” They recommended further fact-checking. 

“My initial reaction was: ‘I didn’t want to do that,’” Ferentinos said, but he ended up agreeing to run the story in January, so Pallakoff could do her “triple-checking.”

He regretted his decision. 

The impact of Hazelwood and a California law

The Supreme Court’s Hazelwood ruling came down on Jan. 13, 1988 — two days before the AIDS story was supposed to run — giving schools a broader ability to censor student newspapers under the First Amendment if there were “legitimate pedagogical concerns.”

That same day, Warren said the article would be “shelved” — a euphemism for censored, Pallakoff said — marking the first time a principal interfered with The Epitaph’s publication. Warren threatened to suspend Calcagno and Pallakoff if they defied him. 

“Because we were a well-known high school paper, within an hour of that conversation I had with Jim Warren, we had journalists calling us, asking: ‘Hey, do you expect there’s going to be any consequences of the Hazelwood decision?’” Calcagno said. “I remember picking up the phone and saying: ‘There’s already consequences of the Hazelwood decision.’”

Ferentinos told them: “It’s your paper. You get to make the decision.”

Both Pallakoff and Calcagno vowed to print the story and accept the consequences.

“The campus filled with national media, and this was before the Internet, so it’s pretty wild that the news spread,” Pallakoff said. “It was put on the AP wire, and it became national news pretty instantly that we had been censored.”

That’s when a Mercury News reporter informed them of a California law that negated Hazelwood. The first-of-its-kind state law said student editors — not administrators — determine the content published in school-sponsored student media.

After confirming the legal implications with Mark Goodman, then executive director of the Student Press Law Center, Pallakoff and Calcagno were excited. They went forward with the publication, as planned, and were relieved to have the law on their side. 

“If you’re going to try to censor a paper, The Epitaph was the wrong paper to pick on,” Calcagno said. “You have these students who are running this really mature, responsible, important story and talking so intelligently about First Amendment rights and press law. So it just looked really bad for the school administration.”

In a later issue, The Epitaph published its “Story Behind the Story,” dissecting the story’s timeline and the staff’s resistance to administrative censorship. And it mentioned SPLC’s efforts to increase the number of states with laws like California’s that protect student press freedom, starting with Massachusetts and Iowa. The number of states with these New Voices laws — as they are now called — just recently reached 18. 

“Something that The Epitaph case did is show people that if you think student First Amendment rights are appropriate, you need a law like [California’s],” Calcagno said. 

In the aftermath, Calcagno and Pallakoff were invited to go on TV shows and radio stations to discuss their meaningful experience fighting for First Amendment rights. That year, The Epitaph won SPLC’s Scholastic Press Freedom Award, which was the predecessor to today’s Courage in Student Journalism Award.

“That was [Ferentino’s] most important award,” Calcagno said. “That was the award he was most proud of.”

Where are they now? 

Pallakoff works as a somatic trauma therapist, and Calcagno retired from his job as Director of Engineering at Microsoft to pursue a second career in filmmaking. They remarked how strange it was to be talking to the adult daughter of their high school classmate.

Both write, though not in a journalistic sense. Pallakoff writes poetry, songs and prose in her free time. Calcagno attended film school and has written pilot scripts and fiction. 

Although journalism and law do not play an obvious role in their careers, both deeply value their experience at The Epitaph — not just what they learned about journalism, but in terms of valuable life lessons.

“There are many times when you have a choice to speak up or say nothing, and it’s often easier to say nothing out of fear or perceived repercussions,” Pallakoff said. “When you have that support early on to stand up for what you believe, it gives you a backbone when it matters.”

Calcagno, Pallakoff and Ferentinos spoke at a Journalism Educators Association panel in 2013 that marked 25 years of Hazelwood. SPLC interviewed them for other Hazelwood anniversaries. And when later generations of The Epitaph reporters returned to the story, Calcagno, Pallakoff and Ferentinos have been the first people quoted. 

Ferentinos passed away in 2016. SPLC’s former New Voices Fellows Program was named in his memory.

“The students come and go, but the quality of the program stayed the same over the years,” Calcagno said. “Nick was the constant. He was the one who created the culture and set the tone for The Epitaph.”