Tag: Fall 2000

CALIFORNIA -- Five students filed lawsuits against the Los Angeles Unified School District in June challenging the punishments they received for their involvement with an underground newspaper.

In total, 11 Palisades High School students were suspended and four others transferred for their involvement with the Occasional Blow Job, a controversial underground newspaper that insulted teachers, students and administrators and used profane language.

As a result of the suspensions, approximately 300 students staged a walk-out to show support for the newspaper and the students involved.

According to court documents, school administrators said the students involved with the newspaper and walk-out were punished for contributing "to unauthorized material which caused disruption on the high school campus."

For Jeremey Meyer, that contribution was an e-mail he never intended to be published.

Meyer, a senior at Palisades and one of the four students who was forced to transfer to another district high school, filed a lawsuit asking the court to allow him to return to Palisades.

U.S.

UTAH -- It happened over a year ago, but student editors at the University of Utah's Daily Chronicle believe the so-called 'Huntsman affair' is still impacting their newspaper in significant ways.

In August of 1999, former Chronicle editor Dave Hancock wrote a column criticizing the appointment of Karen Huntsman to the state's board of regents because of her lack of a college degree.

Huntsman's husband, Jon, a multi-millionaire and one of the university's major donors, was outraged by the column and threatened to withhold all future funding unless Hancock printed an apology, said current Chronicle editor Shane McCammon.

With over $400 million hanging in the balance, and after extreme pressure from the school's administration, the editor was persuaded.

Hancock published an apology for any personal offense the column caused but stuck by the view shared by he and his staff that there were flaws in the appointment of Mrs. Huntsman.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Current and potential students should soon have easy access to campus crime statistics through a Department of Education online database.

Officials from the DOE began compiling campus crime statistics from colleges and universities in August for collection in the database, which will give students the opportunity to view crime information from colleges and universities around the nation in one place.

The DOE will present the data to Congress in December.

High school journalists and advisers in Colorado are relieved.

They managed to insert a provision into a bill exempting some student journalists from a requirement that school officials receive permission from students' parents before administering any surveys or assessments.

The original version of the bill did not contain an exception for student journalists.

WISCONSIN -- A federal district court will have the opportunity to determine if the referendum system at the University of Wisconsin -- which allows the student body to determine funding for certain student groups -- is constitutional.

Although the Supreme Court upheld the use of mandatory student activity fees to fund campus groups in March with its decision in Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Schools with information regarding registered sex offenders present on their campuses will be required to make that information available to students if the Senate approves a bill passed unanimously by the House in July.

If the federal bill becomes law, beginning in 2001 campus police departments will have to make available the same kind of sex offender registry information as local law enforcement would.

KANSAS -- Completing course work may not be enough to attend graduation ceremonies at Schlagle High School in Kansas City.

Mary Colston was ejected from her graduation ceremony in May after a dispute with administrators over an honor cord she was wearing that signified her membership in Quill and Scroll, the national honor society for student journalists.

Colston said school officials told her she could not wear the cord because only students who were members of the National Honor Society are allowed to wear their cords.

NEW JERSEY -- The student newspaper staff at William Paterson University may be facing a difficult fall semester if university President Arnold Speert sticks to a promise he made last spring.

Speert said he would no longer recognize The Beacon as the campus newspaper after being offended by the paper's annual satire edition, The Bacon, which was published in May.

In a memo sent to the university community, Speert said he was "appalled and offended by the insensitivity and poor judgment" of the newspaper staff in publishing material that he called racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemetic and "antithetical to the values that are at the heart of this University."

Speert also said his administration would no longer advertise with the paper or grant interviews to its reporters.

He further threatened to make The Beacon's other advertisers aware of the school's condemnation of the paper and to discourage them from advertising with the publication in the future.

OHIO -- Ohio University student Nathan Ray will return to campus this fall after settling a lawsuit in which he accused the school of violating his rights to due process during a campus disciplinary procedure.

The Department of Education is currently suing two other public universities in Ohio to prevent them from releasing campus disciplinary records to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Some critics of campus courts say the secrecy in disciplinary proceedings can lead to charges that the system is unfair.

Ray was suspended in April after a campus court found him guilty of violating the student code of conduct.

VIRGINIA -- A slightly increasing minority of Americans support free-press rights for high school students, according to a recent survey.

In The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center's survey, "The State of the First Amendment 2000," released in early July, respondents were asked whether they believe high school students should be allowed to report on controversial issues without the approval of school authorities.

Forty-three percent strongly or mildly agreed that students should have the right to cover hard-hitting stories.