The 'Eagle Times' Student Newspaper: Editorials

Journalistic expression may be curbed

Commentary by Calla Mounkes

March 01, 2007

Censorship has always been a renowned controversy. Most United States citizens interpret the First Amendment as the freedom to say and publish anything. However, for as long as the constitution has been in existence, people have been challenging it. Contemporary authors know the limits to which their own audience and their artistic license constrain them. And contemporary organizations realize the bounds of what the public will accept.

In the past, several regulations have been created to stem the flow of high school press. The Student Press Law Center web site details the onset of the distrust in student press.

Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court case, gave public high school officials greater authority to censor some school-sponsored student publications if they chose to do so.

The verdict was that the school district did not violate freedom of speech by allowing the principal to remove two controversial pages of the school newspaper. The pages contained articles about divorce and teenage pregnancy.

But after the case was resolved, several states, including Kansas, created their own laws, giving students more protection against censorship. In 1992, the Kansas Student Publications Act was passed. The act protects student material from being "suppressed solely because it involves political or controversial subject matter."

According to John Hudnall, Executive Director of Kansas Scholastic Press Association, a few qualms have recently arisen from the Kansas House of Representatives.

Representative Don Myers of Derby has introduced a proposal for an amendment to the Kansas Student Publications Act. The amendment, if passed, will require each Kansas board of education to form a student publication committee. The group will consist of the superintendent, a member of the board of education, and a parent of a student attending school in the district.

Before publication, all the material may be previewed by the committee and the committee may suggest changes to it. But the author and student editor have the final say as to whether anything is removed or altered.

Questions may arise as to the validity of such committees. They apparently have no effect whatsoever except to point out what they dislike.

The proposal simply puts a crunch on the student writers. If everything has to be reviewed before publication just for the sake of review, then the deadlines will have to come early. Timely publications, like Silver Lake High School's web site, would have to be reviewed immediately to provide appropriate and up-to-date news. Will one of the committee members always be standing by to review the pieces posted? If the amendment is accepted, this issue would prove to be difficult.