Tag: Winter 2008-09

When Chris Lowry, Colton Dougan and Michael Joseph walked into their high school in Arkansas on Oct. 6, 2006, they did not expect to be filing a lawsuit against the school in federal court four days later.

As millions of high school and middle school students walked through the schoolhouse gate after summer vacation, many found their T-shirts were not so accepted by strict administrators and teachers.

Colin Moyer, 18, has no current plans to become a professional journalist but felt it was his civic duty to start his own independent newspaper at his high school.

The freedom of expression torch once carried by former editors at the Daily Tar Heel was passed to a new editor to ensure that the legacy of the 2005 freedom of expression agreement remains at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But after a new chancellor was named in 2008, the agreement had to be signed again.

This edition of the SPLC Report marks the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Tinker decision, in which the Court famously declared that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Editors of the Eastern Progress, student newspaper for Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., scored a victory for open records in an appeal to the Kentucky attorney general that challenged the university's redaction of information from campus police reports.

SPLC presented the Courage in Student Journalism Award, co-sponsored by the Newseum and the National Scholastic Press Association, to student editors Jaishri Shankar and Rachel Wagner, adviser Peter Daddone and Principal Debra Munk of Maryland's Rockville High School for their joint efforts in publishing a package of stories exposing gang activity in the neighborhood.

If you did a Google search for the name "Thaddeus Grage" you would find the Indiana University at Bloomington sophomore's name associated with some unsavory allegations on the anonymous gossip Web site JuicyCampus.com.

Across the nation college newspapers are either struggling with money or holding steady in a less-than-perfect economy. While college publications try to keep their advertising revenue and readership up to avoid job cuts and losing publication days, commercial newspapers have fallen behind.

Twitter. It is a name many student journalists coming back from media conventions have heard so often.