News

TENNESSEE -- The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation will maintain public records on convicted sex offenders working or studying at college and university campuses in the state, under legislation signed on Feb.

INDIANA -- School administrators who failed to find the humor in a satirical underground newspaper ended its publication and suspended the three students who produced and distributed it.

Deans at Columbus North High School halted production of The Quadrilateral after its first issue on Feb.

FLORIDA -- Shirking off school and work, dealing drugs and having sex to get his next fix of opiates -- a high school student's harrowing account of drug addiction reads like a scene from a film about heroin like The Basketball Diaries or Trainspotting.

But after it appeared in a high school newspaper, a principal questioned its propriety and now wants increased control over student journalists.

Principal Lynda Boyer at Manatee High School in Bradenton objected to "An Addict's Tale," a first-person account of an anonymous student's addiction to the prescription painkiller OxyContin and heroin, which appeared in The Macohi on Jan.

WASHINGTON -- Even though a federal appellate court last month denied a request to rehear before a full panel of judges a case involving a student who was expelled from high school for a poem he wrote at home, two dissenting opinions accompanying the ruling strongly criticized the court's decision and supported student free expression.

"The panel consigns high schools to a constitutional black hole, where freedom of speech exists only to the extent that administrators are comfortable with it," U.S.

NEW YORK -- Syracuse University's student newspaper, The Daily Orange, was heavily criticized this week following the Feb.

FLORIDA -- A former high school newspaper adviser and an English teacher who battled censorship throughout their careers in education have teamed together to write a book about their experiences and offer guidance to others facing free-speech limitations.

Gloria Pipkin and ReLeah Cossett Lent, co-authors of "At the Schoolhouse Gate: Lessons in Intellectual Freedom," have spent much of their lives advocating free speech and academic freedom for students and teachers.

"We hope [the book] will give people the spiritual sustenance they need to resist censorship," Pipkin said.

Three months after being prohibited from using campus space to display an exhibit, a student organization and its leader are suing the University of Houston.

Jeanne Tullos and the Pro-Life Cougars, a student group of which she is president, filed suit in U.S.

MICHIGAN -- After a five-year legal battle, a state appeals court ruled last month that law enforcement officials at private colleges can be deputized by local sheriff's departments, giving them the authority to enforce the law both on and off campus.

The decision, handed down in January by the Michigan Court of Appeals, appears to give student journalists increased access to records of arrests carried out by campus police, said Dawn Phillips Hertz, general counsel for the Michigan Press Association. It sets a precedent for colleges and universities throughout the state.

WYOMING -- A principal who censored a student journalist said he was acting to save two students charged with felony vandalism from further embarrassment.

Rachel Kildow, editor of Cheyenne East High School's The Thunderbolt wanted to run a story about two students on the school speech and debate team who were arrested and charged with vandalizing police cars.

MASSACHUSETTS -- It is generally agreed that the most effective way of stopping thefts of college newspapers is to investigate the crimes and seek to punish the perpetrators.