NEW YORK -- The student newspaper at Freeport High School won a fight to retain the free-press guidelines it has operated under for 30 years in November.
After The New York Times published a commentary criticizing the school board's attempt to establish administrative control over the newspaper and a camera crew from the Freedom Forum showed up at one of their meetings, the school board relented and decided to drop its efforts to eliminate the free-press guidelines.
\nWEST VIRGINIA -- The U.S. Department of Education told\na college to correct its reporting of campus crime statistics\nin September.
\nFLORIDA -- Five students at Miami-Dade Community College are\nsuing the school for prohibiting them from handing out written\nmaterial on campus, saying the college's literature distribution\npolicy violates their right to free speech.
CALIFORNIA -- Despite a law guaranteeing students in the\nGolden State freedom of expression in their student newspapers,\na Santa Clarita principal has found a new basis for censorship\n-- the state sex education code.
\nNEW JERSEY -- The yearbook staff at Richard Stockton College\nis relieved but cautious following the dismissal of a lawsuit\nfiled by a student seeking almost $10,000 from the college due\nto a mistake in the yearbook.
\nNORTH CAROLINA -- "Everything that comes out of your\nwork is a lie," began an e-mail message sent to the editor\nof the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's student newspaper.
"It will be a pleasure to watch you bleed to death!!"\nthe message continued, "Prepare to die!!!"
The message, which threatened University Times editor\nJillian McCartney with explicit physical and sexual torture, was\ndetermined by an administrative board at the university to have\nbeen sent to McCartney by the school's former student body president.\n
The board suspended Nicholas Mirisis in September for at least\ntwo years.
NEW JERSEY -- An administrative law judge ruled in September\nthat a high school teacher who refused to give a student credit\nfor creating a brochure about a hallucinogenic mushroom did not\nviolate the student's First Amendment rights because the 1988\nSupreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v.
CALIFORNIA -- A superior court judge dismissed a police\nofficer's libel suit against a student reporter in October based\non a California statute designed to prevent lawsuits aimed at\nintimidating public speech.
\nCALIFORNIA -- In a victory for University of California at\nSan Diego students' right to free speech, the school agreed to\nsettle a lawsuit filed by sophomore Ryan Benjamin Shapiro, who\nsued the school after he claimed it violated his First and 14th\nAmendment rights.
OHIO -- "Many of you are probably asking yourselves\nwhy we are doing this. The answer is simple: Because we can,"\nNelsonville-York senior Devin Aeh said in the first issue of her\nunderground newspaper, Lock Down.
"Because this school can take away our backpacks,"\nAeh wrote.