Tag: Fall 2001

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a school district's appeal of a federal court ruling that said peer grading violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as the Buckley Amendment.

The U.S.

Lesson for yearbook editors: Never leave out the picture of the\nschool's cheerleading captain.

Especially if her father is a lawyer.

Student editors and school officials at Satellite High School\nin Florida learned that lesson when the father of one of the school's\ncheerleading captains sought a court order to stop the yearbook's\ndistribution until his daughter's picture could be added to the\nteam page.

A Brevard County judge declined to grant the injunction, but\nthe Scorpio staff decided to correct the yearbook with stickers\nbearing the girl's picture rather than risk a further delay in\ndistribution.

The problem began when the pictures of two cheerleaders who\nwere incorrectly identified as cheerleading captains were displayed\non the team page while the photo of the true captain, Christie\nWilliams, was omitted.

MONTANA -- A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a former Montana State University-Northern professor who claims that his First Amendment rights were violated when handbills he posted around campus were systematically removed.

A three-judge panel representing the U.S.

Valerie Snyder wanted to pass out Campus Crusade Survival Kits.\nJoe Baker wanted to circulate a flier challenging evolution.

MISSOURI -- A graduate student's challenge to a university policy that requires prior approval for research on human subjects has focused attention on what some describe as an unfair governmental check on journalists' First Amendment rights.

This spring, Michael Carney, a journalism masters student at the University of Missouri at Columbia, became the first to challenge a university policy requiring research projects to gain the approval of a federally mandated institutional review board.

The review board exists to ensure that all research on human subjects is conducted with certain standards in mind.

OHIO -- The well-respected student newspaper at Upper Arlington\nHigh School has long been viewed as an island of student press\nfreedom in a state with no state law protections for student journalists.

But that freedom has been limited by a new school board policy\nthat advisers say could lead to more censorship of a previously\nindependent voice.

The new policy, approved by the district's school board in\nJune, is largely a revision of the "Student Rights and Responsibilities\nHandbook." The policy gives school officials the right to\nregulate written expression that is "inconsistent with the\nbasic educational mission of the school district," a phrase\nnot specifically defined.

Carol Hemmerly, adviser to the Upper Arlington High School\nArlingtonian, said she is worried that the wording of the policy\nis too broad, leaving too much to administrators' discretion.\nHemmerly said the Arlingtonian has drawn criticism from school\nboard members for articles that criticized a disciplinary policy\nand highlighted the experiences of homosexual teens in school.\nShe said the new policy is partly a reaction to that coverage.

"They want to have a little more control over anything\nbefore it blows up in their face," she said.

However, Assistant Superintendent John Artis, who directed\nthe policy review, said the changes were part of a routine examination\nof the policy and not directly related to anything that was published\nin the paper.

NEW YORK -- It is not often that a student newspaper adviser supports shutting down the newspaper, but the adviser at Onondaga Community College said chronic and intense cases of mismanagement on the part of the paper's top editors left her no choice -- and the editors are not fighting back.

Laurel Saiz, adviser to The Overview, Onondaga's student newspaper, said she was called upon nearly every other week to resolve disputes among the staff members.

WISCONSIN -- A student's creative writing assignment describing\nthe killing of a teacher is not a "true threat," the\nstate supreme court ruled in May, overturning the author's conviction\nfor disorderly conduct.

The ruling brings to a close a case that began in 1998 when\na student, identified only as "Douglas D," wrote a story\nfor a creative writing assignment about a student named Dick who\ndecapitates his teacher with a machete.

TENNESSEE -- Apparently one punishment was not enough to teach a Middle Tennessee State University student not to steal from the campus newspaper.

Jenny Crouch, adviser to Sidelines, Middle Tennessee State's student newspaper, said a student accused of stealing a Sidelines newsstand has also been implicated in the theft of papers that contained an article detailing the student's appearance in court on the original charge.