Tag: Spring 1996

"Two area businesses sell cigarettes to minors," read the Jaguar Journal headline. Underneath was only a large white space with a logo saying it was an investigative report.

Censorship. It is a powerful word. One which sparks controversy whenever it is mentioned, and civil unrest wherever it is employed. Censorship is an authority's right to prior review with the power to delete. It is now being practiced at Port Townsend High School.

An editor's column in February prompted administrators at D.C. Everest High School in Schofield to confiscate 1,400 copies of the student newspaper, suspend the student for sexual harassment and require prior review of all future issues of The Jet by the principal.

The San Leandro School District agreed in September through arbitration to pay San Leandro High School's first black homecoming queen, January Cooper, $3,500 for emotional distress after omitting her photograph from the 1993 yearbook.

Seven years after the Supreme Court's Hazelwood decision, calls from the high school student media seeking legal help from the nStudent Press Law Center hit an all-time high in 1995.

Missouri, the home of the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier case that curtailed student First Amendment rights, has taken the lead this spring in tackling state legislation that would give students free press protections and counteract that 1988 decision. Illinois, Nebraska and Michigan have also pursued the battle.

The debate over how to deal with "indecent" material getting into the hands of minors via the Internet and computer networks may finally be over, at least from Congress' view. For media advisers, college and high school students and others who are concerned about First Amendment rights, the debate is just beginning.

A New Jersey appellate court ruled last August, in a unpublished decision, that the Peddie School's decision to dismiss a student who violated a school-disciplinary rule by "bullying others" via e-mail is acceptable.

NEW YORK Student editors at the City University of \nNew York School of Law at Queens College (CUNY) defeated \na former student in September 1995 in a lawsuit filed \nagainst them for refusing to publish his classified advertisement in \nthe student newspaper.

The Bellevue School District has settled out of court with a student, who was punished last year for creating a satirical computer "home page" about his school.