Just months after a lone United States Supreme Court Justice said he thought "the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools," a federal district judge upheld three students' rights in a modern-day Tinker case, affirming once again that students can wear black armbands as a silent protest and do not lose their First Amendment rights at school.
Tag: Winter 2007-08
More high school censorship updates
Production and distribution of Winnacunnet High School's newspaper is back to normal after administrators pulled the February "sex" edition of the paper from the district's middle schools.
Twenty years of Hazelwood
Student journalists around the country feared the Hazelwood case — arising from a Missouri principal's decision to censor newspaper articles about teen pregnancy and divorce — would create a "chilling effect" by making it easer for high schools to censor speech, especially in student publications.
Close call in California
Twenty years after the Supreme Court announced its decision in the landmark student press case Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, experts still struggle to gauge its impact.
Hazelwood's rule proves hard to pin down
Twenty years later, students, scholastic press advocates -- and administrators -- say Hazelwood has left them under a cloud of confusion about how much power administrators have to censor student speech. What constitutes a "legitimate pedagogical concern" still remains an active topic of debate.
Hazelwood expanded principals' authority to censor — but not all school leaders choose to exercise the power
When Nelson Beaudoin became principal of Kennebunk High School in Kennebunk, Maine, seven years ago, he said students thought his philosophy about free speech was novel, even a bit strange.
Safety alerts go high-tech
The text message to students read: "From Public Safety. Male was found on campus with rifle. Please stay in your buildings until further notice. He is in custody, but please wait until the all clear."
Digital divide
Former editor in chief Jenny Redden of Oklahoma State University's student newspaper, The Daily O'Collegian, always thought of the newspaper and its Web counterpart, ocolly.com, as one and the same.
LoMonte to lead SPLC
Frank Daniel LoMonte will be the Student Press Law Center's next executive director, officially joining the SPLC on Jan. 2, 2008.