News

RHODE ISLAND -- Concern for their adviser may have been the greatest motivator for Cumberland High School student journalists who decided to cut out an editorial cartoon from all 2,500 copies of the April edition of the Bird’s Eye View.On April 29 staff members voted not to distribute the issue containing the cartoon, which depicted Superintendent Joseph Nasif Jr.

CALIFORNIA -- Campus police at California Polytechnic Institute at Pomona chose not to investigate the theft of about 2,500 copies of The Poly Post, a student newspaper on campus, because they claimed someone cannot steal something that is distributed for free.

On May 19, the newspaper received calls from readers claiming they were not able to find newspapers on certain parts of campus.

MISSOURI -- Gov. Bob Holden signed legislation June 7 strengthening the Missouri Sunshine Law, which included clarifying provisions that require compliance by University of Missouri officials.

The new provisions in the law raise the fines for open-meetings and open-records violations, set a uniform price for reproductions of records, update the law to include the Internet and other new electronic means of communication and explicitly list the University of Missouri Board of Curators as a governmental body subject to the law.

FLORIDA -- A former high school newspaper adviser who alleged his teaching contract was not renewed because the paper published controversial content has reached an out-of-court settlement with the Palm Beach County school district.Toby Eichas, a former Boca Raton High School teacher, was awarded $20,000, which school board members unanimously approved without discussion on May 19.

WASHINGTON -- School officials had not yet finalized their response to a May 26 Federal Communications Commission ruling that could have shut down the Mercer Island High School radio station when the ruling was set aside amid questions of possibly inaccurate information in the initial ruling.

IOWA -- Subcommittees of an Iowa State University task force investigating a riot have decided to comply with state open-meetings statutes after the student-run Iowa State Daily and a local paper published articles and editorials bringing the issue into the public eye.After a riot and other disturbances marred the 2004 Veishea celebration on April 18, Iowa State President Gregory Geoffroy suspended the event for 2005.

INDIANA -- A college newspaper adviser was removed from his position of eight years after a yearlong struggle with administrators over content in the student newspaper.Michael Mullen, adviser of the Trailblazer, a student newspaper at Vincennes University, was told during a performance evaluation on May 11 that he would be transferred to the school's English department, where he taught for six years prior to serving as adviser of the newspaper.

FLORIDA -- A state appeals court has ruled that the Seminole County School Board correctly denied a request for student discipline forms and a bus surveillance videotape even if all personally identifiable information about students were concealed.A unanimous ruling on May 14 by a three-judge panel of the Florida 5th District Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision that Florida students' educational records cannot be released.The ruling does not involve or affect the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.Between December 2001 and January 2002, producer Patti Parker of WFTV, a commercial television station serving Seminole County and East Central Florida, requested information in student educational records about a string of incidents occurring on Seminole County school buses.

FLORIDA -- Administrators have recalled and reissued a page from a Key Biscayne school’s “memory book” after a parent notified school officials that the book contained an anti-Semitic remark written in German.