News

After the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a religious study group flier distributed in Altoona School District, the rural school board in February banned distribution of all outside materials by private groups.\n\nThe ACLU objected in September 2001 when Altoona required its teachers to hand out religious brochures in school advocating a release-time program for the nearby Child Evangelism Fellowship.

The Student Press Law Center, the Newseum, the National Scholastic Press Association are now accepting nominations for the 2002 Courage in Student Journalism Awards.

The Student Press Law Center is seeking applicants for our 11-month fellowship position for recent college graduates with experience in editing, news writing and design for both print and Web-based publications.

KANSAS -- Seven school board members are facing a civil lawsuit alleging five separate violations of the Kansas open-meetings law after the Piper Unified School District held a closed meeting last December.

The board members met during a recess to discuss the meaning of plagiarism after Christine Pelton, a biology teacher at Piper High School, gave 28 students zeros for plagiarizing a botany project by using material from the Internet.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Although their school newspaper is still young, student journalists at Eastern Senior High School are becoming familiar with the ins and outs of high school reporting -- the painstaking research, the breaking stories, the sometimes overbearing administrators.

Principal Jerome Shelton threatened to hold up publication of the March/April issue of The Rambler, including front-page stories on two students who were fatally shot, because he said he did not have an opportunity to review the contents of the paper before it went to press.

FLORIDA -- A federal appellate court has affirmed a district court's ruling that a student at Killian High School in suburban Miami did not have her constitutional rights violated when she was arrested and strip-searched for helping to distribute an obscene pamphlet at the school in 1998.

Jailers who strip-searched Killian student Liliana Cuesta after her arrest had reasonable suspicion to do so "based upon the violent and threatening language and imagery contained in the pamphlet," the U.S.

KANSAS -- "Active protest" against the student newspaper was the motivation behind last month's shredding of 800 copies of The Bulletin at Emporia State University.

A student, whose name has not been released, "came forward and took full responsibility" for the incident a couple of days after it happened, Vice President of Student Affairs Diane Bailiff said.

Residents of a dorm encountered about a foot deep of shredded newspapers the morning of March 1 with a note stating "This is a TEST!

MONTANA -- Days after a judge issued a restraining order to prevent the punishment of a student who had posted a "10 Hottest Freshman Girls" section on his Web site, a technicality has allowed the Great Falls school board to expel him from his high school.

FLORIDA -- A college student featured on the cover of a "Girls Gone Wild" video has sued the makers of the video for invasion of privacy and unauthorized use of her image.

Becky Lynn Gritzke, a business major at Florida State University, appeared in the 2000 Mardi Gras edition of the video and was also used on its cover, its Web site, and in television commercials for the product, according to court documents.