News

MASSACHUSETTS -- Longmeadow town officials said this week that they will not subpoena a student journalist who wrote a disturbing article detailing the marijuana-smoking habits of an anonymous female student and the student's mother.Officials initially considered issuing a subpoena to Ashley Shaw, a freshman at Longmeadow High School, that would compel her to reveal her sources' identities.

OHIO -- A kindergartner's candy and religious poem have caused a stir and a lawsuit in Kettering.Just before Easter 2003, an Orchard Park Elementary kindergartner, five-year-old Madison Wuebben, asked teacher Angela Helwig if she could distribute jellybeans with a religious prayer attached.

ARIZONA -- A Mesa junior high school principal has confiscated the latest issue of the student newspaper because of an editorial critical of the school's dress code enforcement, student journalists said. During the week of Jan.

WEST VIRGINIA -- A jury on Feb. 5 ordered West Virginia University to pay $868,000 in damages to three campus police officers who contend that the school retaliated against them for reporting that its campus police department falsified crime statistics.The university, however, says it will appeal the Monongalia County jury's decision next week.

Two universities faced with lawsuits claiming their policies on campus speech were unconstitutional have reviewed and rewritten policies that upheld students' rights to free expression.The speech policies at the University of Texas at El Paso and Southwest Missouri State University prohibited students from giving speeches, holding rallies or distributing literature outside of designated areas of campus.The U.S.

TEXAS -- A lawsuit brought against Texas Tech University by a medical student who was expelled for writing a firsthand account of an autopsy in the student newspaper has been settled, the student's lawyer said last week.Lawyers for Texas Tech would not comment on the case but an administrative assistant said the case was still pending in court. She would not say whether a settlement had been reached.Sandeep Rao, a student at Texas Tech University Health Science Center in Lubbock, was expelled from the university in April 2002 for allegedly violating a confidentiality agreement he signed before witnessing an autopsy as part of a class assignment. The agreement with the Health Science Center prohibited Rao from releasing identifying information or facts about the deceased.Under Texas Law, however, records of autopsies performed by medical examiners are open to the public.Rao, a former columnist for the University Daily, wrote about the autopsy experience in the Jan.

FLORIDA -- A high school freshman has filed a lawsuit challenging a Broward County School District policy that requires administrators to review and approve student newspapers, petitions and fliers before students can distribute them.Christine Curran was a Driftwood Middle School eighth-grader in February 2003 when she passed out fliers to fellow students between classes, inviting them to a three-day church youth conference.

KANSAS -- A Lawrence newspaper and television station have asked a court to force the University of Kansas to reveal the full terms of its contract with athletic director Lew Perkins.In the lawsuit filed Jan.

CALIFORNIA -- Staff members of an alternative student newspaper at the University of Southern California suspect students have been stealing copies of their newspaper.Joshua Holland, assignments editor of The Trojan Horse, a left-leaning alternative newspaper, said more than 2,500 copies of the paper's Jan.

TENNESSEE -- Stacks of student newspapers found in a trash bin last week at the University of Memphis will not be investigated as a theft but as malicious mischief, campus police said.Derek Myers, the university's public safety deputy director, said that because the papers were recovered and put back into a distribution rack before anyone notified police, they cannot be considered stolen.''We can't fit what happened to the way the laws are written,'' Myers said.