Tag: Winter 2007-08

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Frank Daniel LoMonte will be the Student Press Law Center's next executive director, officially joining the SPLC on Jan. 2, 2008.

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