News

Administrators at two schools have been forced to clarify their policies regarding underground newspapers after student journalists protested being censored.

In the midst of a legal battle over two high school students' right to distribute an underground newspaper in Michigan, the South Lyon Community School Board has approved a definitive policy on student distribution of outside material.

The new five-page policy specifically concerns what it calls time, place and manner restrictions, review procedure and content-based restrictions on 'written matter, which is not sponsored or officially endorsed by the district and which is intended for general distribution.'

South Lyon High School Principal Larry Jackson suspended three students last spring for trying to distribute their underground newspaper, The First Amendment, at school.

Thanks to the permanent nature of a high school yearbook, staffs who simply mean to impart lasting memories to classmates can find themselves embroiled in particularly bitter censorship battles with administrators trying to protect school image.

Students are often left wondering whose book the yearbook is.

Pop quiz: You're a high school administrator or faculty member. You feel targeted by critical writers at your student newspaper.

Two courts have ruled schools have the right to punish students for producing threatening material at home when it is distributed at school.

CALIFORNIA ' A student journalist at Chico State University landed behind bars for simply doing his job.

Misha Osinovskiy, a photographer with the student newspaper, The Orion, was arrested during Labor Day weekend by an undercover Alcoholic Beverage Control officer while photographing him giving a citation.

WASHINGTON, D.C. ' Seven student journalists were caught up in a wave of mass arrests while covering International Monetary Fund and World Bank demonstrations in late September, stirring criticism of police action.

MARYLAND ' An award-winning student media adviser at Mount Saint Mary's College, who faced intense pressure from administrators to censor the student newspaper, resigned three weeks before classes resumed this fall.

William Lawbaugh was associate professor of communications and adviser for the Mountain Echo and Pridwin yearbook for 15 years before announcing his early retirement effective Aug.

University personnel at two colleges took matters into their own hands, by trying to silence their student newspaper's crime coverage while parents and prospective students were making visits to campus.

During a two-day period in October, student union employees at Marquette University in Wisconsin confiscated nearly 1,000 copies of the student newspaper for carrying the banner headline, 'Savage beating just 2 miles from MU.' High-traffic bins that contained the Marquette Tribune were emptied hours before hundreds of parents were expected to visit the campus during Parents Weekend, said Libby Fry, managing editor.

CALIFORNIA ' An independent student newspaper at the University of California at San Diego agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against the university.

Student journalists at two universities resigned their editor positions this fall because they said administrators bullied them and their staffs by criticizing content and, in one case, threatening budget cuts.

Nick Will, editor in chief of Harvard University business school's newspaper, The Harbus, resigned his post in November after administrators threatened to hold him personally accountable for future content that they found offensive.