Mary Beth Tinker and Mike Hiestand's magical journey across America is winning national recognition for igniting a much-needed dialogue about the importance of protecting students against censorship.Launched on Constitution Day 2013, the Tinker Tour is a nationwide First Amendment awareness campaign bringing the landmark student-speech case, Tinker v.
Author: Frank LoMonte
Appeals court throws out Iowa student’s “name-calling” conviction
The justice system increasingly is being asked to intercede in unpleasant social interactions involving young people that, once upon a time, used to get settled through a stern lecture and a parental conference.In Pennsylvania, police charged a 15-year-old with the crime of "disorderly conduct" for secretly recording students bullying him during school, a case that prosecutors recently withdrew after a public outcry.And in Iowa, an Allamakee County high school student was hauled into juvenile court and adjudicated "delinquent," the equivalent to a conviction in adult criminal court, for insulting remarks ("you fat, skanky bitch") that she yelled at a rival student while exiting the school bus.In a victory for judicial restraint, the Iowa student's case was overturned April 16 by the Iowa Court of Appeals, which reached the common-sense decision that not every upsetting remark can be criminalized as "harassment."In its ruling, the Court of Appeals found that Iowa's criminal harassment statute -- which outlaws speech that is intended, without legitimate purpose, to "threaten, intimidate or alarm" -- cannot be violated by mere insults.
A constitutional right to leggings and long hair? When are school dress codes unfashionable?
Momentous advances in free-speech law don't always involve historic acts of journalistic courage. Sometimes they start with something as tiny as a kid who doesn't want a haircut.That's what led a Chicago-based federal appeals court to conclude that it can be unlawful gender discrimination to make male high-school athletes, but not female ones, wear their hair short.In a 2-1 ruling issued in February, the federal Seventh Circuit decided that gender-based dress and grooming codes can violate both the federal Title IX gender discrimination statute as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.In sending the case back for trial, the appeals court in Hayden v.
Student’s “lewd” video about teacher provokes errant Wisconsin ruling applying “online harassment” law
Can derogatory remarks about a teacher be both constitutionally protected speech and also punishable as harassment?A Wisconsin appeals court appears to believe so.The Wisconsin Supreme Court is being asked to take up the case of "Kaleb K.," a 15-year-old student from Stevens Point, Wisc., who was arrested after posting a homemade rap on YouTube filled with profane, degrading language about his Spanish teacher.In September 2012, a juvenile-court judge declared Kaleb delinquent on the grounds of violating state criminal statutes against disorderly conduct and unlawful use of a computer communications system.In a ruling last November, the state Court of Appeals threw out the disorderly conduct charge, finding that Kaleb's lyrics, though distasteful, were not threatening, obscene or otherwise outside the boundaries of the First Amendment.But the court then went on to uphold the conviction under the state's computer-harassment law, which makes it a misdemeanor if a speaker "sends a message to [a] person on an electronic mail or other computerized communication system" that contains lewd or profane language "with the intent to harass, annoy, or offend."It's possible to harass someone even with a constitutionally protected message if the speech is delivered in an especially harassing manner.
Try this at home: Are campus debit-card agreements deepening student debt?
With the annual cost of getting an education topping $18,000 last year at a four-year public college — and more than $40,000 at a private school — inquisitive journalists are the best "consumer protection" cash-strapped students have.Here's a consumer-protection story begging to be localized by college media...On Feb.
Questionable state of campus mental-health services deserves journalists’ scrutiny
Recent media attention, lawsuits and Department of Education regulatory actions have spotlighted what, for many years, has been a shameful secret on campuses across the country -- that the default response to discovering a student was suicidally depressed was expulsion.In a searing recent look at the inadequacies of colleges' response to mental illness, Newsweek's Katie J.M.
Does legalized censorship make students less likely to criticize school administrators? One study suggests “yes.”
Student newspapers in states with legal protection against censorship publish many more editorials than those in states lacking protective laws, and their editorials are more likely to be critical of school policies.That's the takeaway from a recently published study in the Maine Law Review by an attorney and former Iowa school-board member who concludes that "a free student press has far-reaching positive consequences that reverberate through the public schools and beyond."Author Tyler Buller's article is the most comprehensive nationwide look at whether state laws counteracting the Supreme Court's 1988 ruling in Hazelwood School District v.
Journalism: Love it or leave it
When professional journalists fail to stand up for the rights of student journalists, it feels to students like a betrayal — like those who themselves suffered censorship have forgotten the disempowering feeling of being distrusted. The word of journalism professionals gives cover to those who censor to deny the public truthful information about their failing schools. When journalists side with censors, that is the side they are taking — the side of lies over truth, the side of less information over more.
Civics teachers agree: Students need training in gathering and distributing news
Journalism education: It's not just for journalists, anymore.That could've been the headline on a newly released study from our friends at Tufts University, whose research continues cementing the connection between healthy news-consumption habits and participatory citizenship.In a report just posted by Tufts' Civic Youth project, researcher Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg finds almost unanimous agreement among high school civics educators that, to be well-prepared for adult life, students need the ability to gather and produce credible information -- the skill set we're accustomed to calling "journalism."Encouragingly, the vast majority of survey respondents said they commonly assign reading news articles as part of civics curriculum.
Reforming the school-to-prison pipeline: How high school journalists can localize America’s biggest education story
A Florida student playfully throws a lollipop at his friend on the school bus -- and gets dragged off to jail on a battery charge.