Around the country, school board members and college administrators are being threatened with harsh punishments for illegally conducting business behind closed doors.
\nIn what may be an unprecedented action, five former Las Cruces school board members are facing criminal charges for alleged open-meetings violations.
The Supreme Court in February unanimously upheld the right of schools to engage in the common practice of having students grade one another’s work in the classroom, which the Court ruled does not violate federal privacy statutes.
Two separate court rulings in the Midwest upheld the public interest in access to information that was previously kept under lock and key by school and college administrators.
When college journalists at the University of Oregon showed up to cover their student government association’s vote tally after a campus primary election, they were turned away and told they had no right to be there.
High school censorship seems to occur in an ever-growing set of circumstances. For example, in recent years the Report has described restrictions on student Web sites, repression of underground newspapers and rejection of student media advisers who stand up for their students' rights.
Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan suggests, in a court brief filed by his office, that student journalists at the college level should face the same First Amendment restrictions as high school students.
Ryan filed the brief in early May, on behalf of an administrator at Governors State University in a lawsuit brought by student editors of the campus newspaper.
Articles about homosexuality were pulled from student publications at two Houston area high schools when administrators deemed the content too controversial.
The student newspaper at Hastings High School in Houston and the yearbook at Cinco Ranch High School in Katy both had planned articles addressing the struggles of being a homosexual student.
The University of Texas at Tyler this month reinstated Vanessa Curry as the student newspaper adviser, two weeks after she was told her contract would not be renewed.
The university's decision on May 3 followed efforts by the national Society of Professional Journalists and the Southwest Education Council for Journalism and Mass Communication to restore Curry in her position as adviser and journalism lecturer.
The Pennsylvania state board of education, after being heavily criticized by newspapers across that state, has decided not to tamper with regulations protecting the rights of student journalists.
The announcement, which came at a hearing held May 15 in Harrisburg, ends months of lobbying by high school journalists, advisers and professional newspapers.
Campus security officials at Missouri Southern State College recently agreed to release complete incident reports to student journalists at the Chart after an open-records dispute lasting several weeks and involving the state attorney general's office.
Chart editor J.R.