Tag: Spring 2001

CALIFORNIA -- Almost a year has passed since the principal of Salinas High School first put the yearbook staff on probation for what he described as a publication filled with inappropriate content.

Newspaper thefts on college campuses increased dramatically this spring, due in part to a controversial advertisement that has triggered thefts and protests on campuses across the country.

Although students rarely pay for an issue of their campus paper, producing a newspaper costs money -- sometimes lots of it.

Two years ago, Congress made it harder for colleges and universities to hide violent crime behind the ivy-covered walls of their campus courts by passing legislation specifically allowing schools to release the disciplinary records of students found responsible for violent crimes.

Three-fourths of both high school principals and advisers at schools around the country say their student newspapers are censored, a recent survey revealed.

Of those principals and advisers who agreed that their newspapers were censored, 39 percent of the principals and 40 percent of the advisers indicated that the censorship was done by the adviser.

OREGON -- A student editor filed a lawsuit against three university officials March 16 for violating his First Amendment rights and confiscating a box of confidential university records that landed outside his office door.

Portland State University officials locked Dimitrius Desyllas, editor of an alternative campus publication, The Rearguard, out of the newspaper's office and detained him for more than two hours after they learned he had the box of confidential student disciplinary records, Desyllas said.

Although the digital age has often meant unprecedented improvements in access to information, new digital communications devices in use by police and emergency departments may mean just the opposite for news reporters.

Many cities are switching to the digital devices to ensure security, but with increased security comes restricted access for the media and the public because traditional radio scanners no longer work.

ILLINOIS -- An eight-year-long legal battle finally came to a close in November when the Chicago Board of Education agreed to pay $40,000 to a former student who was suspended for criticizing her school's "no shorts" policy in the student newspaper.

Cynthia Hanifin was a 17-year-old student at Hubbard High School in Chicago when she was suspended in 1993 for four days for the column.

ILLINOIS -- Several months of controversy surrounding Governors State University's student newspaper will likely drag on following a decision by student editors to sue the university for violating their First Amendment rights.

Although school officials said the editors can publish at any time and have simply chosen not to, the students say their ability to produce a newspaper has been effectively crippled.

The editor and managing editor of The Innovator filed suit against the GSU Board of Trustees and three administrators Jan.

The U.S. Department of Education conducted inquiries into campus crime reporting practices at both The College of New Jersey and Bowling Green State University this year.

The College of New Jersey was selected for review because of a professor's complaint that the college had not reported three sexual assaults on campus during the 1996-97 academic year.

PENNSYLVANIA -- Several students were suspended in March for distributing an underground newspaper that administrators said contained "hurtful" comments about other students at the school.

Council Rock High School principal David Yates suspended the honor students after they created and distributed copies of The Laundromat Liberator, which attacked three students in particular with "hurtful, embarrassing and slanderous" comments, Yates told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Yates would not specify how many students were suspended or for how long.